Eclipse Girl
by Shuvcat
Summary: alt s5, sequel to my fic Walk The Rain. Can Faith bring herself back from the dead?
1. Listening At Gravestones

Eclipse Girl by Shuvcat (c) 2000

A sequel to Walk The Rain. At the end of that story, Faith had fought through the lonely dark world she found herself in after Who Are You -- only to find herself face to face with her own gravestone. The Dark Slayer is dead... but Faith is about to find that death isn't really the end of anything.   
Begun spring 2001, still in progress. Rated R for violence, language. This chapter contains spoilers for my fics Miles To Go and Long Winter's Nap. This is a work of fiction based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which is owned by Joss Whedon, Fox, Mutant Enemy, and the WB. Other entities own the other characters/plots I will be refering to in the story. I own only my original characters and storyline. 

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Chapter One  
Listening At Gravestones

  
  
_I wonder if I'm rotting yet._ Faith sat crosslegged on the cold, muddy grass, staring at the simple grey stone that she had been staring at for the past three days. Literally. Days.... hell, maybe it had been weeks. The sun came up, and went down, and the rain came and went, and there wasn't much point keeping track of them. Wasn't like she really had to worry about little things like time, or eating, or sleeping, or getting cold sitting on the muddy ground in the rain anymore. She was dead. She, Faith, the Slayer -- Faith the orphan, screwup, slut, advocate to evil, terrorizer of men....was dead at eighteen. _I'm not supposed to be here._ The graveyard was empty, cool under overcast skies, and the air was damp. Rows and rows of grey stones stretched over the hills, like petrified soldiers. The grass and trees in the distance weren't grey, they were almost weirdly neon green against the dark clouds, sucking their nourishment straight out of the wet air, juicy with life. It was springtime across the earth. Everything was alive. Ha. _I'm not supposed to be here. I don't believe in ghosts. (Screw you, Bill.) Death is death, the end. Screw the Hellmouth. Maybe evil things have to go to Hell, but..._ She gazed around at the cold, unfriendly surroundings, remembering her vain hope that evil took Mastercard. Over the trees, the dark clouds grumbled. She forced herself to focus on the gravestone. Keep those scary thoughts away. The stone was small, square, and boring. Jane Doe. Wasn't even carved on, it looked like that decal lettering shit they used on office windows. They'd scrape it off someday and haul the stone off, to be recycled on some other forgettable chick's welfare grave. _It's not me. Can't be. Come on, I'm sittin' right here. How dead can I be?_ Against her will Faith remembered, and felt cold air chill her nonexistent insides. Suicide. March 1st. The chick under this rock had offed herself. Couldn't be, it couldn't be her. If nothing else, Faith had always prided herself on surviving anything, and survivors didn't commit a wuss out suicide. Slayers didn't. Slayers died with their throats cut and their arms ripped off and their blood splattered over three counties. Slayers didn't whimper like pussies and pitch themselves over the nearest guardrail. As if mocking her, the memory of the bridge flashed bright and clear in her mind's eye. A little too clear -- as if with no brain matter to slow it down or physical sight to dilute it, the memory was the only thing TO be seen. That was a scary idea by itself -- her memories were getting sharper by the minute, instead of fading. _Fun. Like I needed to see those any better...._ The rain-slicked bridge glimmered in her sight. Faith remembered looking over the edge, feeling the night wind bite her cheeks. She remembered trying to time it so that one of the cars below would run her over, because if the fall hadn't killed her before, she was pretty sure this one wouldn't-- No way. No way she could have done that. For one thing, she couldn't remember _doing_ it. Much of the past few weeks was a blur, but one point Faith was fairly clear on was the memory of stepping back from the rail, berating herself even then, that Tough Girls Don't Die and she should suck it up and keep going. She _remembered_ that. And yet, she was definitely dead. She knew that for a fact. One reason she was sitting here, trying very hard not to touch anything, not even the grass if she could help it, was because of the graphic proof she'd recieved concerning her deadness. Buffy had walked right through her. The memory gave Faith the creeps so bad she started shaking. She could still feel it. Scratch that -- she couldn't, actually feel anything -- a fact that had made itself known to her the first evening she'd sat watch here. She didn't feel the wind when it blew through the cemetery, even though she could hear it in the trees. She didn't really feel the ground she was sitting on, although she could pretend that was because her butt was asleep. The fact that she couldn't feel her_self,_ though.... that, touch as she might, when she really thought about it she couldn't, in fact, feel her knees or her hands or anything... that was harder to ignore. It terrified her, and Faith didn't scare easy. It was like she could be wiped off the face of the earth with no effort at all. _Like I wasn't even here. She walked through me like I was nothing._ It wasn't so much being walked through that shook Faith. It was the fact that the blonde Slayer hadn't even noticed. Didn't realize, didn't register, didn't sense that Faith was there. Shouldn't she have felt something? Some twinge at her Slayer sense that Faith was there? Didn't Buffy even _care?_ Guess not. _She always was good at that. Seeing right through me._ That first day, even, when Faith was chattering on with Xander and Willow at the school, trying so hard to sucker them into liking her. Because she had to, of course. She had to put up a front, give them good stories, entertain them with something so they'd keep hanging with her. She'd given them a good show, gabbing on about the Louisiana vamp daddy and his killer crocs, all the while scared shitless that they'd see through her, would walk on and ignore her totally, just like everyone else. They hadn't; she had pulled them in, at least that day. The Scoobs, she had. Buffy, she hadn't. Buffy hadn't bought it, she could tell even then. The Golden Slayer had watched Faith with distrust the whole dinner at her mother's, and later with the vamps. That distrust had seemed to fade as weeks went on, but was always there, always lingering, no matter how close they got. No matter what they went through together. And in the end.... in the end, Buffy had gotten her excuse to never trust Faith. Ever. _But that wasn't my fault. She never even gave me a foot in the door. _ Yeah, like Faith had worked so hard on the trust angle after-- Faith shook her nonexistent head hard, so hard she thought she could see her hair moving in wispy breaths through the air. She was sick of it. So sick and tired of retreading all the same old mistakes, over and over and over again, hearing them in infinite loops in her head. All it took was one memory, no matter how small or even nice, and it was enough to let loose all the others, her whole miserable suck life flashing before her eyes. _Well, they say that'll happen when you die. _ She would have torn her hair, gnashed her teeth, except her hands sort of melted into her head and the spot where her mouth used to be just felt kind of numb. _I'm sick of this!! I don't wanna remember this crap anymore! I'm fed up with it, enough already! It's time to move on!_ Except... the whole point of being dead was that you _couldn't_ move on. You would never have any chance to fix things, or even a chance to bury old mistakes with new ones, because you were dead and that was supposed to be it and she shouldn't even be sitting here now staring at her own damned gravestone, by all rights she should be-- Where? _Shouldn't I be in Hell now?_ Suicides went to Hell, according to Liz. Her dead Watcher had begged Faith, that horrible night all those years ago, to finish her off, because she hadn't wanted to commit suicide. Although the way Lizzie told it, Heaven wasn't exactly fun central either. The Cathys had some pretty dried ideas about what constituted eternal paradise. Lizzie used to joke that she was hoping for lots of chocolate and Mel Gibson in a tartan, but she hadn't sounded too solid in that belief. Seemed like the only place you could have serious fun was on earth, alive, sucking it up for as long as you could cling to your sorry excuse of a life. _Right. 'Cause life was just so much fun._ "You've got a spot in heaven, duck," Liz had told her one day. "It's my personal belief that us tormented dolls go through our share of hell on earth. Ain't no point in punishing us after we've kicked off, now is there?" _Wanna bet?_ This sure felt like punishment. She'd thought so was doing so well. She'd killed that shapeshifting... whatever it was. She'd gotten Bill hooked up with his dead sis again, sent them both off to wherever happy reunited families go. She'd done good. She hadn't killed anybody.... well, there was that guy in Seattle, whose cousin she'd inadvertantly bumped into at that creepy Mile-High Cross shrine place. That was one thing she still felt kind of bad about. But then all that other stuff had happened. She thought she'd fixed it. She thought it was okay. And then she found out she was dead. _Shit, maybe I AM in Hell. This sure isn't much fun._ Faith cast her ghostly eyes over the edge of the field, where the dark green forest began. The trees here were shorter, less imposing than the freaky tall pines in Michigan had been. Faith's brief stay in the auto state -- when she'd still thought she was alive -- had given her a wicked tree phobia. The woods may be dark and deep, but they sure as hell weren't lovely. She half-expected another one of those hulking, shapeshifting monsters to materialize in the darkness between the trunks and start over toward her.... Faith shuddered. _No, I killed that thing. It didn't get me. I'm not in Hell...not yet, anyway. And I still don't believe in it, so suck my ass, Giles, and you too Liz. I don't believe._ This place sure felt hellish, though. This limbo where the days all seemed different lengths, where the rain fell white and milky sometimes, and sometimes things appeared in the grass a few yards away -- like blobby bits of decomposing flesh, like hearts and livers with legs, oozing through the grass.... she saw these at night mostly, and they scared her. Not because they were there, but because seeing them, at all, was an effort. Time was Faith's nightvision used to show hidden targets like that clearly, but the last few nights she'd noticed that her eyes, which had served her so well on so many patrols, now seemed to be clouding. Getting fuzzier. _I wonder if my eyeballs are rotting._ Faith shivered again, as an emotion -- grief -- finally tugged at her. She'd been proud of her dark brown eyes. She'd had a great body; a sexy, kick-ass, enviable bod. Now it was feeding worms somewhere. It wasn't fair. She didn't want to be dead. She wanted to get up and run screaming as fast as she could, find people, find a party, find someone to bang, just to prove to herself that she was real, solid, still here. She didn't do any of these things, because she knew she wasn't. Didn't need to walk through any more people, thanks much. _I'm dead. I'm really dead._ There was always the chance this wasn't her grave. She could find out easy enough. Just stick her head down there and check out the body. Her insubstantial limbs shuddered, her formless muscles ached. Faith winced, putting her breezy fingers to what used to be her temples, as a dull pain thudded behind her eyes. No, she probably _couldn't_ do that, come to think of it. If she couldn't pick out demon jellyfish sliming through the grass at night she sure as hell wouldn't be able to see anything inside a pitch black coffin. She didn't much care to see her own rotting corpse anyway. Oh, God..... She couldn't even cry. She used to be proud that she didn't cry. Now, when she would have liked to, she couldn't. Because she didn't have eyes anymore. _I'm not supposed to be here._

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She had visitors. Faith rose her head out of the circle of her arms, resting on her knees. She might not have a body, but her psyche, which was used to occupying one, seemed willing to create a "form" for her. If she concentrated hard she had arms, legs, a torso, even hair. If she didn't look down to see the ground where her feet should be, she could even pretend she was whole and solid again, so most of her time and energy was used holding a shape. Anything to keep off the nothing-feel of being out a body. As long as she kept that off....the longer she kept it off, it was two or three or ten minutes longer she could keep her sanity. As long as she kept taking it in bits like that, maybe she could do this. _Yeah, right. Do what? Be dead?_ Faith shoved away those thoughts. She wasn't sure but she had a feeling her trembly "form" would be visible to humans -- so she regretfully snuffed it, wincing as she became invisible. If she'd had lungs, her held breath would have escaped her in relief. _Still here._ Sometimes when she blinked out like that she wondered if she'd come back. Seemed like it would be so easy to fade out permanently, into the darkness... She focused on what the two men standing by her alleged gravestone were saying. Two lard assed, older guys -- one in plainclothes, one in a cop's uniform. Police. Faith sat still, thinking how strange it felt to have a cop so close and not run for cover. She watched as the two men walked in circles, spouting boring questions at each other. The plainclothes man was the county coroner. "--three shots, two in the leg, one in the back of the head," he was saying. "Poor gal didn't even know what hit her." "I wouldn't call her poor gal," the fat cop muttered. "Seattle PD says she's the perp who sliced their man's throat right before they took her down. Had it coming, if you ask me." The air by the gravestone shivered. The cop squatted, painfully, to check out the name. "Still no ID?" "Damndest thing." The coroner shook his head. "Never saw fingerprints like that before. We couldn't place them to anybody. The lab lost the blood sample twice, can you believe it? And the jury's still out on the dental records. Personally, I don't think anyone's ever going to find out who this woman was." The officer stood up, something white pinched between his fat fingers. Faith prickled at the sight of one of her daffodils -- Buffy's daffodils, the one she had come here with Riley to place on the grave -- in his hand. The officer showed it to the coroner. "Somebody knew who she was," he pointed out. For the first time since she'd come here, Faith rose to her nonexistent feet. The rise was smooth, gliding, not hampered by having to move limbs into position and push against gravity. She barely thought about moving, didn't have time to form an arm or anything like a visible appendage. She didn't even think about the fact she was a ghost, not solid. All Faith knew was what she wanted to do to this fat bastard right now. Faster than a heartbeat, emotion sharpened into a hot blade of hate, as real and physical as anything, flaring outward. "JEEZ-us--!!" The cop uttered a scream as he jerked his arm back. The wilted flower dropped to the ground, spilling white petals like rice. Blood spattered on the name on the gravestone. Jane Doe was stained in blood. _Now it's mine,_ she thought grimly. The coroner waddled over fast, checking out the damage. The cop's hand was covered in blood, the burn completely covering his meaty hand. Acidic, as if he'd poured a whole batteryful over his flesh. The coroner hustled the cop away, still belting curses. They got in the county's car and sped off for the hospital. Faith's whole being trembled. She looked at the arcs of flaming red light still around her, like coronas on the sun. Circular flashes of light and heat jumped around the cemetery, lashing out from their center -- her -- with weakening force, little red tongues burning down. She looked down at the bloody flowers, flopped pathetically on the ground next to her stone. They might not have been much, but they were all she had left. _ Hands off my corsage, beefy._ She thought about sitting back down, but decided against it. She had hurt somebody. She had affected something in the living world. She might be dead, but she could still spill blood. In a perverted way, that made her deeply, deeply happy. She crouched down, filling out her shadowy ghost form once again. Wispy fingers reached out to B's daffodils -- shit, could she have picked a cheaper, bargain-basement florist to get them from?? -- and tried to pick them up. Her fingers went right through the flowers each time. It didn't matter. They were touching the gravestone, close enough. Faith straightened, feeling the slightest bit better for the first time in however long she'd been here. What had happened? Was it some residue from being the Slayer? She could lash out with those fire things and protect herself? How come she hadn't been able to pull that in Michigan?! Would have come in pretty handy more than once. Answer: because at the time, she'd been alive. Or thought she was. An old, long-forgotten tidbit of Giles-wisdom came at her: ghosts generally didn't do all the cool junk they did in movies, because most of the time they simply didn't realize they were ghosts. And that brought her back to a bad thought: the coroner's words. She hadn't had time to think about them before, but now their full weight came down on her. _Two shots in the leg, one in the back of the head._ Shot? She'd been shot? Some lame ass cop had shot her to death?? Now she felt like sitting. Damn. She settled to the ground like fog, her brief good mood thoroughly killed. She, the Slayer, born and bred for the express purpose of dying a gruesome bloody death fighting the forces of darkness... had been taken out like a common street punk. Like a dog, for Christ's sake. That was worse than unfair. Worse almost even than suicide. That....was embarrassing. Faith slumped on her ghostly knees, back where she started. Disgusted, she dropped her head again, withdrawing from it all. 

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Nighttime. The slimy things used to stay off her gravestone. The past few nights, though, they had been....well, they didn't quite slither but they didn't quite crawl, either. Some of them looked like barely more than balls of snot rolling over the grass, in extreme slow motion, faintly glistening. They reminded Faith of the plasma sweeps on level nine on one of the Playstation games she used to have. Icky little bastards. At least these ones didn't shoot laser beams, though. No, these just rolled around, leaving trails of glowing slime, and they used to keep their distance, seemingly knowing enough to keep off the Slayer and her grave. Not anymore. Tonight, alone, she'd had to reach out an airy arm and swipe at the things three times to keep them from sliming over her stone. She didn't know why she cared. It wasn't even her name, and it wasn't like she wanted to sit here for eternity tending the plot. It was the principle of the thing. The name Jane Doe was forever screwed up for her now; she'd always think of this grave, her death, when she heard that name. That was why she stayed here, she guessed -- because if she moved away, left the cemetery where she'd learned she was dead, it was like moving away from that moment in time.... and if she left that moment behind, she would never be able to go back. Some sick part of Faith felt like if she stayed here long enough, time would reverse, she could go back and be alive again. _No such luck, duck._ Here came another one. Faith watched with growing frustration as the slimeball, barely visible in the near-pitch-blackness, edged ever closer to her stone, like a bug making its way across a massive floor. It was like watching a hand on a clock move. How long was she going to have to do this?! _Too close. You lose, snotball,_ she thought angrily as she flared out. The red slashes of light arced through the air, lighting up the suffocating darkness, and the pile of slime was launched halfway across the graveyard, spraying red-hot drops of ectoplasm everywhere. Faith laughed, and immediately felt stupid. It was pretty sad when you had to get your kicks skeet shooting ghostly slimeballs. She used to have big ugly growling vamps scared to death of her. Now she was Faith, fearless Slimeball Slayer. _That'll teach them, won't it then?_ Casting her blurry, fading vision around the ten foot radius around her, Faith's consciousness fuzzed as she lowered her head once again. _What are they, Mama? She had been awakened in the night by a noise, had left the huge four poster bed that she shared with her sister. Her tiny bare feet had hit the floor, and her sharp senses seemed to be with her still, because she easily stepped around the dolls and toys on their rug without the use of an oil lamp. She hadn't wanted to wake her blonde older sister, slumbering peacefully with her thumb in her mouth. The snow had been falling in great flakes outside the large mansion windows as Faith had padded down the long hallway, past the master bedroom her parents shared. Her father, the Mayor of Boca del Infierno, had to get his sleep for tomorrow's speech. Big day tomorrow. New Year's Eve... or Walpurgis Eve... little Faith wasn't sure. She wasn't little, and she'd known it. She was really an adult, or close to one, but the body she was trapped in was seven years old. Not my idea..... She'd passed the doors as if sleepwalking, doors that hadn't been opened in fifty years....or weeks? She headed for one at the end of the hall, five doors down. Light glimmered from the crevice at the bottom as her tiny fingers turned the knob. Near the wall, on the other side of the unfurnished room, stood a large wooden rocking chair. A figure sat in the chair, covered in a blanket, head hooded like the virgin Mary. Faith tensed as her little legs brought her closer to the slowly moving rocker -- that had been the noise that woke her; the slow, eerie creak...creak...creak. The shrunken, hooded figure did not move, but the chair rocked on, back and forth, back and forth. The light had come from a single oil lamp, set upon the floor of the dark spare room, its flickery light casting spooky shadows over the bare walls. It and the chair and Faith were the only things in there. Feeling a lot like a doomed cheerleader babe in a horror movie, Faith tensed herself and stepped past the chair, to see the figure's face. Edna Mae Wilkins sat huddled in the blue crocheted shawl. Her face was gaunt, the cheekbones jutting outward, her skin a bluish color and her thin lips pink against it. Her almond-shaped black eyes were huge, ringed with a month's worth of sleepless shadows as they stared fixedly at the wall. She looked totally mad. Not angry mad... Cheshire Cat-Cuckoo's Nest- I'm-mad-you're-mad-we're-all-mad-here mad. Seven year old Faith had let out a nervous sigh. "Mama?" she spoke the woman's preferred label. The Mayor's dead wife was not her mother, and Faith knew that. Somehow Edna Mae had spirited Faith here, to the year 190...something, and had made Sunnydale over in its old image. She had conjured up Buffy as Faith's eight year old sister, and the boss as her father. Faith didn't know why Edna had done it, and she didn't know how to get back to the real Sunnydale, but everyone had been acting so nice and... non-evil, that she didn't much care. The old broad had been good to her, prim and prissy maybe, but still a thousand times better than her real mother had been. All she'd asked in return was that Faith play along and call her Mama. Faith could do that. She was real good at yelling out whatever name somebody wanted her to. "Mama," she said again, wearily tugging the older woman's ruffly sleeve. Edna Mae had jerked away. "SSHHH!" she hissed. She was wearing her boots, which looked weird with her nightgown. Old-fashioned, tall laced boots with heels that were almost stilletos. As Faith watched in confusion, Edna gripped the arms of the rocker with her gnarling hands and stamped her foot wildly on the floor. "HA!" she laughed, delightedly. Faith had noticed at this point that there was an air grate in the wall. The fancy wrought iron cover had been removed -- or pushed off -- and surrounding the black opening were the greasy remains of.... well, whatever they were, they'd had lots of legs. Edna lifted her own dainty, skinny leg, looking at the slime coating the bottom of her boot. Apparently she'd been squishing bugs for some time. She turned her wild-eyed face toward the girl, and a horrible grin peeled her once-beautiful features. "That'll teach them, won't it then?" she leered. Faith didn't like this. In the months since Edna Mae had begged her to be allowed to stay, that she would die if Faith forced her to leave.... she truthfully didn't look all that good. Usually her pretty young mask was firmly on, the perfect Victorian tart. Right now she looked like death microwaved over. Faith looked away from her ersatz mother's aging face, to the grate where another something with legs was crawling out of the air duct. Spiders. There's about fifty billion of those happy little critters in there..... Edna Mae lashed out with another scream, stamping the crawler into gooey submission. Faith wondered why the rest of the house hadn't woken up by now. "What are they, Mama?" she asked, her voice hushed. Edna Mae gathered her baby daughter into her arms, pulling her up into the huge rocker, which was so large they could both sit on the seat...or maybe it was just because Edna was so withered and small. "They're like me, dear," she rasped, trying to keep calm. A sick laugh escaped her. "They ARE me," she recanted miserably. Her black eyes were fearful as they focused Faith's face. "You must be careful after this, Faith," she warned. "Your father's set up protections, and that British guardian of yours has too, but they're still getting in here -- like -- flies--" Her bony fists almost jerked the armrest out of the chair as she lunged forth to stomp another spider. Faith looked at the square of dark, infinite blackness beyond the grate. "Where are they all comin' from?" she wondered. Edna settled back down in the chair, eyes huge and glistening. "Out there," she jerked her head up at the window over the grate. It wasn't snowing out there. Faith could see the darkness out the window, and it was darker than any natural night, an utter void. The lights of the fledgling village known as Boca del Infierno were supposed to be on that side of the house, but Faith had the feeling that if she got up and looked out that window right now....there would be nothing there. Nothing but darkness. Edna Mae let out a weak little moan. "I'm poisoning you," she had wailed. The room was bare but wallpapered, in the elegant, overdone way everything in this era was; curling purple flowery vines made pretty designs up the wall in neat rows. The paper was spattered with black spider guts now, and the floor, which had been beautiful polished wood, looked as though it was being eaten away by the acidic blood. Faith got it. Edna's fairy-tale magic spell on the world was failing. These bugs were...the real world, or something out to hurt her, getting in through a crack in the armor. Faith suppressed a shiver inside her scratchy nightgown. "I'll help," she muttered. Edna Mae didn't argue. They had sat there until sunrise, mama and daughter squishing spiders together, keeping the bad things out of the strange little world they'd created....._ Faith's head snapped up. The wind howled through the dark, cold cemetery like a woman's scream. Her ghostly form trembled, the wind tearing through it, making her feel naked. Where the hell had THAT come from?! You'd think one thing about being dead was that you wouldn't have to sleep or have nightmares anymore.... It hadn't been a nightmare. It was a memory, from the coma. Faith had more or less forgotten the mass of freakish visions she could recall from her downtime. Wasn't like they meant anything. Just the drugs they'd pumped her full of messing with her head, that was all. She avoided thinking about those dreams when she could, because she kept remembering other stuff.... her apartment, and Buffy, and hospital-bright whiteness.... the deep relief of seeing a friend, layered over something else -- betrayal. Cold, sharp, tearing into her like a knife. _There's something I'm supposed to be doing...._ Faith's senses were crackling. The sensation wasn't unlike taking a full mouth of Pop Rocks. She looked over and the dark forest, and her heart -- or the place where she used to have one -- jumped. A white human-shaped form was coming over the headstones toward her. 

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The figure walked like a human, was shaped like a human, but was glowing dull, greyish white. Kinda killed the human theory. Obviously, it wasn't a vampire, either. Faith jumped to a less vulnerable position, although she wasn't quite sure what she was going to do. _Rule number two of slaying: if it's coming at you and it's glowing, it probably requires beating to a pulp._ The Slayer bod may be gone -- and did she ever wish she could throw a punch about now -- but she still had her brand new firepower going for her. The more Faith used the arcing flames, she knew they were definitely a holdover from the Slayer power.... like adrenaline and rage given form. The thought made Faith kind of happy; at least some of it did stay with a Slayer after death, after all. The figure hobbled closer, its dirty glow having diminished, but still obvious. It seemed to limp as it moved past -- and through -- the tombstones, moving slower the closer it got to her. Faith flared up her fire arcs, shooting them toward the black sky, framing her in curling red tongues like frills on a lizard. _I'm a bigger, scarier animal than you, so stay off unless you wanna die, Shiny. Come to think of it, keep on comin'. I can use the fight._ The figure stopped. It stood there for some seconds, like it didn't know what to do. The grey shimmery expanse where a face should have been seemed to stare at her. "How are you doin'?" came a voice. Faith cocked her head. Sure didn't sound like the kind of voice a ghost would have. It was raspy, mottled, more like an old man's. She wasn't quite sure what he'd even said. Now that her vision was used to the relative brightness of the ghost after the pitch black of the night, she could see a face in there -- a scabbed, wizened old face, dirty and bruised. The ghost was dressed like a bum off the streets of Boston, overcoat, scuffed shoes, fingerless gloves, holey sweatpants. As she watched him the ghost's mouth opened, a gaptoothed hole in his face, and he spoke again: "I say, girlie, how ya doin' that?!" he wheezed, mouth moving slowly as if forming the words was an effort. Faith's nose, where it used to be wrinkled up, her breezy lips curling up in disgust. "What's it to you?" she answered back. Speaking was weird. She had no face or throat to feel the words vibrating in, they just kind of flowed out of her. It sounded a little like hearing noises underwater. The bum ghost started hobbling toward her. Faith prickled. "Stay off," she warned, spreading out the arcs to encircle her grave. He didn't look dangerous. Then again, lots of dangerous things looked anything but. Buffy was a perfect example of that. This guy, though, didn't even seem to have heard her, although he fell back at the sight of her flames lashing up. A branch of foggy, dirty ghost stuff pointed toward her. The toothless old geezer grinned. "Call that a trick?!" he moaned. Okay, this just officially became a turn off. Faith readied herself, seeing the arcs encircle her, gathering themselves to flash Wino Man into little glowy blobs. "Nah," she retorted, with what would have been a killer smile. "You're right, that's no trick. _This_ is a trick--" "I can make night day," the old ghost creaked out. Faith wouldn't have given this weird sentence a second thought. Obviously the bum had died drunk. And she would have blasted him, except-- The wind tossed the tree branches, thrashing them violently. Thunder grumbled, a thick rolling noise like two sheaths of stone moving against another. Faith realized though, when the noise didn't fade out but got louder, that it wasn't thunder. The sky was moving. A flash of bright white light exploded over the horizon, like a nuke going off. Light flooded across the sky in one massive, all encompassing arc. The overcast clouds lit up like grey transparent skin, bluish veins showing where they knit together. Shadows moved on the ground underneath the forest trees, speeding across the grass like a time lapse film. In the space of two seconds, the sun sped behind the clouds up to the center of the sky -- and stayed there. Faith, badass Slayer ghost, was so startled she sat down hard on the grass. 

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"How'd you do that?" This time, Faith was doing the asking. The old wino had huddled his dusty, filthy self against a nearby stone, head crooked against the name. Only thing missing was the brown sack with the bourbon, but Faith didn't suppose liquor was easily available to ghosts. Boxcar Willie grinned gummily at her. "Nothin' but time, Jessie," he wheezed, stuck on that name for God knew what reason. "Goes and comes, comes and goes. One minute equals a day, one day equals a thousand years, a thousand years equals the first second of eternity." Faith rolled her nonexistent eyes. "And all we are is dust in the wind, dude," she muttered. It made sense, a little -- time meant nothing here, so being able to fast forward through it seemed simple enough. Faith idly fantasized about for a moment about travelling back in time and preventing her own death..... and then reasoned if that were possible, there'd be a lot more back-from-the-dead people walking around. No go there. She sighed, looking up. The noonday sun had stayed up since its mad rush to the middle of the sky, but since the clouds hadn't moved off in weeks, it was impossible to tell whether it had moved any. The ridge of trees at the end of the cemetery rustled every so often in the rain-scented breeze. A squirrel -- the first living thing Faith had seen besides the coroner and his cop friend -- bounced past the gap between two headstones. Faith watched boredly as the black thing reappeared on the other side of the stone, waited, for some squirrel reason, and then bounced a few more feet, furry tail slinking fluidly with its body. Wino Man saw Faith was looking at something. He twisted his unshaven face to look, catching sight of the squirrel. "God-damn rats!! I told yew to stay outta my yard!" he suddenly belted in a sandpapery voice. He looked toward Faith with an ugly leer. "They'll drink the water, didja know that? Ya thirsty, Jessie? Would you like a drink?" Faith tensed, wondering just what kind of sleazy innuendo she should make out of that. Wino Man scrabbled to his feet -- or did the ghosty equivalent of trying and failing to get up out of his seated position, and Faith felt herself gliding to her self-defense stance again, just in case he thought he could try anything. Guess even death didn't kill off the perverted ideas floating around in guys' heads. But Wino Man didn't come toward her, instead he lunged for the black squirrel. Smart squirrel, it took off, bounding across the grass, hopping around stones and flower holders. _Good riddance,_ thought Faith. The brief lift she'd felt at having someone to talk to had dampened once she realized the bum was a total nutjob. He raced across the cemetery, hellbent on catching the squirrel for his supper or whatever he used to do with them. "Get yer little ass BACK HERE!!" he hollered, feet a literal blur as he zipped after the black scrap of fur. Faith's non-brow raised as the old fart lunged -- further than before, an extended stretch -- and reached out ghostly tendons to grasp the creature's fluffy tail. He vanished. Like a dense patch of fog, he just.... evaporated. Faith watched, trying to force her telescopic vision to kick in. The black squirrel had done a wild backflip through the air the same time Wino Man had vanished. It landed in the grass, rolled over, and was on its tiny feet right away, freezing as though a predator was stalking it. The squirrel bounced once, twice, but not in the bounding way it had before. It acted like someone had put it in a frying pan, hopping up and down, tail flying. It starting running in circles, chasing its tail. Then it took off like a shot -- BAM -- face first into a headstone. Faith almost smiled as the critter got up, shook itself out -- and took off again, in a wild zig-zag path, not straight like before. It jumped, missed, then jumped again to the top of a basin-shaped stone where some rainwater had collected. It splashed in the water, drops glistening dully in the dim light. Suddenly it threw itself off the edge of the rim, kamikaze style, hit the grass -- and started chewing hunks out of itself. _It's acting crazy,_ thought Faith. _It's as crazy as....the wino._ He'd possessed the squirrel. The little black thing was running around taking rabid bites out of its own flesh because the crazy old bastard was making it. Bits of black fur flew as the creature squeaked angrily, flipping one last time before an explosion of fog signaled the return of Wino Man. He collapsed on the grass, cackling drunkenly. The dazed and confused squirrel jumped right through his transparent chest and bounded away across the field, bleeding and scared to death. The old bum crawled on all fours toward her, cackling like an old hag. "Feels good, don't it?!" he hacked at her, nearly falling over. "Feels anything! Like to feel something, Jessie my dove?! Take her by the toe, take her very soul! The fruits of the crucible of Heaven! Bodies bought and sold!" He flopped out on the grass, worn out. Faith was barely listening. Because she had seen something else skulking nearby, where it had perhaps been hunting the same squirrel -- a cat. A scraggy little stray tabby, nosing near one of the other stones. _Anything you can do, I can kick your ass at,_ Faith thought. How hard could it be? Didn't look like it had hurt the bum any. The brief consideration that maybe the wino hadn't always been mental -- that maybe phasing in and out of squirrels had made him that way -- was immediately rejected by Faith as she flowed toward the kitty, which was now humped by a gravestone. It was something to pass the time, anyway-- She wasn't quite sure how to start. Like trying to find the best side of a huge burger to bite into. She guessed the best way to go was just to kind of....fold herself in there.... _Shoop._ Darkness. Then, light, two holes at the end of a dark tunnel. Blazes of white, flashing lights, sheathing past her in crackles. A prickly heat, the shock of _feeling_ after feeling nothing; the startling weight of bone, flesh, fur... sweat, smell, sight.... The world from cat-eye level was black and white, and tall. Blades of grass brushed her whiskers. Tiny hairline flickers made her skin crawl along her shoulder, her ass...fleas. She walked off between the grass, poking a path through weeds. There might be mouse there, food. She was hungry, had not been fed in days. Food flew above, chirping in branches, calling her attention. She could climb, and catch... but easier to stay on the ground, and hide, waiting for one of the morsels to come too close, hop her way. That could take a long time, though, and she wanted to eat now. A blade of grass poked her eye. She slowly locked her jaws around it, crunching the substitute food lazily. Inside the lump of flesh that was the feline brain, synapses crackled. ----holy shit, she was eating grass!! The animal suddenly made a _kaff_ noise, gagged up gooey bits of green, tongue flicking angrily. Large golden eyes stared up at the grey sky, and the trees, now also grey to her cat vision. Dirt prickled on the pads of her feet, between her furry toes. Burrs stuck in her sides and hung from her belly, but she didn't care. She could _feel._ She could breathe -- her breath was coming too fast, her heart was racing in relevance to the slower human heart -- but she could feel it, air filling tight lungs, blood moving hotly through solid veins. Faith had never realized how hot being alive was. _I'm alive!!_ The cat took off, romping happily through the grass, hurtling in and out of the gravestones; tall grey obliskes like skyscrapers. Everything was so tall! Dirt got in her claws; her tail -- _hey, look at that, a tail_ -- whipped behind her like a flag on a bike. She ran for a real long time, reveling in the feel of her muscles aching, her padded feet hurting. She ran so hard that when she finally slowed down, her cat blood rushing loudly in her ears -- huge ears, she could hear all sorts of weird far-off noises -- she was panting, her barbed tongue hanging out slightly as she finally came to rest in the crook of a tree's roots. She had run into the forest, though not too far -- the graves still were visible over the towering weeds. Her coned ears moved, turning toward sound above her. It was like becoming a Slayer all over again. New senses, new sounds. If a cat could feel joy, that was what she was feeling now. Faith would have grinned had she been able. The image of a grinning Cheshire Cat flashed in her kitty brain. More noise in the grass. Her eyes caught sight of a flash of velvet, darting in and out of the weeds. Her cat belly growled. Like a shot she was off, her predator senses coming to the fore. Stalking, hunting, slaying. She darted into the brush, ran down the field mouse and caught it easily, tearing it apart with a small squeak, crunching its bones, licking the salty blood from the wrapping of its fur. This was too cool. She took off running again, leaving the bloodstained patch in the grass. She ran as hard, as fast as she could, breaking out of the forest into the cemetery again. She was aware of herself, that she had been a human once, a girl, a Slayer with a name, though it was hard to remember what name. Layed in with these thoughts though, were other, foriegn...cat thoughts. How to run, how to balance the tail. How to avoid narrow spaces that her whiskers could not breach. The pattern her tongue would take when washing -- there was a very precise path, memorized and rehearsed like humans memorize combination locks or brushing teeth. She found the basin that the crazy squirrel.... mm, squirrel, that sounded tasty -- had splashed in, and leaped on top of it easily, positioning her skinny fluffy body atop it. Her kitty legs spread, her hanging tail twitching, she noisily lapped up the dirty rainwater. At least it was wet. After not feeling anything in her mouth -- after not having a mouth, it tasted like Perrier. She lapped and lapped, relishing the sensation of water, the coldness, the wetness, even the germy dirt that was undoubtedly in there -- relishing its realness. She leapt off the basin, pouncing happily in the grass, bouncing and racing for hours. Had to be, because from the time she possessed the cat until the time she finally came to rest, this time near her gravestone, the greyed-out sky overhead had dimmed, that faraway sun having finally dropped toward the other side of the earth. The cat flopped over in the grass, panting and heaving, furry belly rising and dropping laborously. ....and Faith spilled her ghostly essence out of the cat, into the grass, formless once again but much, much happier than she had been a few hours earlier. "Holy DAMN that was awesome!!" she belted out. Her underwater voice laughed as loud as she could, high on the buzz of... living. Just being alive again, feeling the machinery, was a rush. She'd had to get out, just momentarily, because it was just too cool. No more of this ghosty crap, she was going to scout for another body -- she rolled over on her ghostly side, to see the furry critter she'd been riding for most of the day. _No offense, kitty, but bein' a cat ain't exactly the most useful gig going, you know?--_ The cat wasn't moving. Faith leaned over, the soft pink haze that surrounded her fading slightly. The animal lay there, a soft, furry puddle in the grass, eyes half open, the third eyelids dropped down slightly, as though it were close to napping. But Faith knew, with a sudden cold certainty, that the poor thing wasn't napping. _--Ohh, damn, and shit for good measure. I killed it._ Faith pooled herself on ghostly knees, hands joining in a V, staring down at the dead animal. She'd run it to death. She must have worn it out with all that running and jumping. That was stupid! Cats did that stuff all the time! She couldn't possibly have put it through any more stress than it had seen in a normal day! Maybe, though, it was something to do with the possessing. Maybe cats weren't built to stand up to ghostly invasion. Maybe the squirrel Wino Man was in had run off into the woods and died somewhere. Maybe, maybe.... it didn't really matter. She had learned something, she guessed. The cat's death was a direct result of her inhabiting its body. Infecting, maybe, was a better word. Somehow or other, just by being there, Faith had killed. Not even a human. A cat. A poor, defenseless, innocent-if-anything-was being. _But I didn't mean to,_ she thought uselessly. So many times she had killed, meaning to, that maybe she couldn't help it anymore. Maybe, at this point, she didn't have a choice. The cat's teeth bared at her, eyes staring blindly into the grass. Faith spread her ghostly fingers, stroking the cat's fur, even though neither of them could feel it. _Sorry, kitty. I'm sorry I break every thing I touch. I didn't mean it. Thanks for the ride, there._ "It's a poison!" Wino Man shouted from where he'd climbed into a nearby tree. Faith's blood would have chilled, had she still had any. _I'm poisoning you._ She didn't have much time to think about it, though, because her attention was caught by something over by the trees, coming out of the forest. Another human shape, but much more solid than Wino Man had been. This shape was black, spindly...almost athletic, but Faith bet her ass that the figure wasn't solid, so athletic might not be the most accurate term. The figure's face was a white oval in its smooth black head, and as it got closer Faith thought it looked like black streaks smearing down from the eyes to the chin... and a mouth twisted down into an almost clownish frown. _No way. Brandon Lee??_ The figure coming at them was not the Crow, of course. It did, however, have a clowny mime-type face -- kind of like the masks in the one and only play the Mayor had dragged her to at one point in an attempt to knock some culture into her -- the Mikado. Two hours of Californians painted up in geisha fright makeup screaming in Japanese. That's what this guy reminded her of. Mikado Man came closer, and as he got to the first row of gravestones, Wino Man, in his tree, freaked out. "NooooaaaAAGGHH!!" he shrieked, his mottled underwater voice shrilling weirdly. He seemed to forget for the moment that he was a ghost, as he fell out of the tree and onto the grass with a wet sort of sloosh. He jumped to his feet, fingerless gloves waving wildly at the stranger. "It's a Hunter!! It's a Hunter, Jessie, call out the air raid!! No jelly in the cupboard, no rations! No! NO!!" Faith started toward him. Truthfully, Mikado Man didn't look that scary, but if Wino Man was that frightened, maybe there was good reason to be. Faith wasn't scared, but she had that wicked firepower going for her. At the very least it would be better target practice than the snotballs had been. The black stick figure hadn't noticed her. Instead it strode toward the wino, who was making himself painfully conspicuous with his panic attack. The figure moved gracefully around most of the gravestones -- but as they thickened it suddenly lifted a leg, which extended, stretching like taffy. Like a daddy-long-legs spider the figure walked right over one, two gravestones in its way, not breaking its stride a bit. Wino Man had finally gotten it into his head that screaming wasn't as good as running. He bailed just as Faith reached him, seconds before the creepy dark guy got there. Faith stepped into the thing's path, getting a good look at the face. It really wasn't that different from a painted mask at all. Black streaks ran down its white cheeks like oil, and its purplish fish mouth was turned down, half open in a toothy gawp. But where a mask would have looked painted, fake, this thing looked... real. No less ceramic or creepy, but definitely flesh and blood... or whatever substituted for flesh and blood here in Ghosty-land. The slanted eyes stared blankly at her, empty holes of nothing. The face wasn't a mask.... but those definitely weren't eyes. Freaky. Faith shook off her disgust, giving the thing a sneer. "So what's your gimmick, whitey? Walk against the wind? Pull out an invisible rope? Trap me in a big old box?" The mime from hell didn't answer, predictably. "Nah, you don't look like a talker," Faith mused thoughtfully. "Me neither. I'm a fighter." She ended that with a right hook to the mime's ceramic face, half expecting it to shatter under her blow. _Oh, that's right. I'm a ghost. Duh._ Her fist, in its human form powerful enough to snap a deadbolt, swiped through the mime's head like a breeze. Faith regrouped quickly, calling on her fiery arcs. They immediately flared up, she could feel them making patterns over her shoulders and hair, lashing like whips. Willing them to their highest, she sharpened them into barbs -- and attacked. Those, thankfully, did some damage. They blasted Mikado Man a few yards off, though he didn't get the air the slimeballs had. _Good start, though,_ thought Faith. _Maybe the more I use them the stronger they'll get._ She didn't bother waiting for Mikado Man to get up, instead she lashed out with more arcs, launching them from her swinging fist, an airborn right hook. This was the way. It felt natural, fighting like this, and it was way damn cool watching the fiery tongues lash out from where she swung. The mime-thing got up, its fluid body moving in not quite a ghostly manner, more like a snake, with physical solidity, but unnatural grace. It came at her again, and this time Faith felt a ringing alarm going off in her head, because there was something very familiar about this-- Cold. Cold swamped out from where the figure walked. The woods turned icy cold. Faith's already-see-through shape tremored. Sadness, darkness. Melancholy. She couldn't fight this thing, perhaps she could for a while, but it was a temporary victory, fading away as all things did, she would have to face facts and realize she would not always be so lucky, and perhaps it was better just to let the darkness claim her now-- No... damn it, no! Faith shook it off, knowing exactly what she was fighting now. A Hunter, the wino had said. Like the thing in the forest in Michigan. Only this one wasn't a mile-high shapeshifter with blades and crap like that-- The deep-rooted sadness that had taken her over for a minute had blinded her to the fact that Mikado Man had made it all the way up to her. The thing grabbed her arms....or seemed to, Faith didn't look down so she wasn't sure what was holding her, but if it was hands then the mime must have three, because one reached up to pull down the ugly mask that was its face. Faith felt herself being sucked, pulled, as if toward a supermagnet. The black nothingness behind the mask dragged her in, face first. Darkness. Lightlessness. Anti-light. Anti-matter. Nothing matter. Nothing had come before, nothing would ever come again. The being that was Faith the Slayer was eroding. No body, no ghost, no soul. No anything. No one even to know she had been, or that she had ceased to be. Her annihilation itself was nothing. Somewhere on the fringe of the rapidly all-encompassing void that was trying to eat her, Faith's arms flailed. ....nnnnoooo!!!" With a painful, whiplash wrench, Faith tore her formless head out of the black mists encircling it. She was staring at the mime-thing's face... or rather, lack of face. The black, hooded hole where a face should have been growled angrily. Hungrily. Panicked, Faith lashed out with her fire-barbs. She cranked them up to eleven, trying to blast them out every inch of her self. It worked. The sonic BANG in the atmosphere between herself and Mikado Man was so fierce that it blew them in opposite directions. Faith blew away, feeling herself flap and roll like a leaf on the breeze. She tumbled on the grass, totally shaken by whatever hellish nothing-place she'd found herself staring into for a few seconds there. That was the closest she ever wanted to get to oblivion. It was more than death -- felt like her soul, her essence or whatever, the stuff that made her Faith... had just started to evaporate. Anything she knew about herself, anything she remembered or knew for a fact, had started to erase, sand dripping away. Bits and pieces of herself, burning off into nothing. Becoming nothing. Faith shook it off fast, shivery. "No," she heaved, getting to her non-feet as Mikado Man came toward her again. "Good trick, there. Almost got me that time." The creature still didn't speak, its face frozen in a silent leer, but it had changed shape. Its shoulders had become spiny; hooked barbs were slowly bulging higher, higher, like a figure made of silly putty. As Faith launched into another fire attack, she realized what the things were: sycthes. Blades, like the one the shapeshifter had used. She knew what to do this time. Kind of shocked she hadn't thought of it before. Feeling the fire-barbs languate out from her arms and head, Faith ran headlong toward Mikado Man, screaming bloody murder. One long black arm ending in a wicked shiny hook slashed toward her. Faith leaped. She shot fire out in rock hard waves, below her, catapulting herself over the blow. To human eyes, it would have looked as though the patch of scorched earth had simply appeared from nowhere, the grass blackening and turning to dirt all by itself. She landed on the thing's back. Grabbing hold of the other blade, she immediately felt it sloop down into what would have been its abdomen. The flesh she stood on swallowed her feet like tar. Grunting with a watery sound, Faith jerked upward violently on the scythe-thing. A red squiggly streak like a painted line ran down the middle of the double-edged blade. But it wasn't paint. As Faith ripped the scythe out of its metaplasmic socket, something too fiery-orange to be blood splurted from the thing's black body. The hole she'd opened immediately closed itself back up as she tore her own feet free, jumping to the grass. Now she had a weapon. Faith glanced momentarily at the long, curved scythe, its big end dripping orangey goo like some giant extracted tooth. She looked up at the regrouping mime-demon, who was turning to face her, still wielding his other blade. Faith leered. "You chose the weapons, Marcel," she growled. "Too bad for you I'm a knife girl." She jumped at the demon, fending off its attack with a shattery-sounding crash of blades. The demon, ghost, whatever it was was tough, but not tough enough to withstand its own blade. In the space of a second, and with three well-placed, brutal stabs, Faith sliced Mikado Man to bits. One black rubbery hand dropped to the ground and just sort of melted like black Jello, leaving an oil stain in the grass. Cut in half, the rest of him fell apart....and exploded. The noise echoed through the graveyard like a round from a Tech 9. The trees shook. Faith floated there in the afterblast, settling herself. She couldn't get used to not having to breathe. Usually she was breathless after a fight, and the fact that she didn't have to go through the cleansing ritual of gasping for air left her kind of cold. She looked down at the blade in her hand. The curved sheath was actually hollow inside, she could see through the guck at the end that it was more like a flattened, sharpened horn than any kind of blade. And that was about all she got to see, because right then it melted in her hand, going the way of its dead (deader?) owner. Faith flicked the black gooey slime off, watching it alternately fall off and through her wispy hands. That sucked. She could have used a sticker like that in-- Well, nowhere, actually. Not like she'd be holding up convenience stores or fighting her way out of vamp ambushes anytime soon. With a wavery sigh, Faith looked around for Wino Man, stepping over the gooey remains of her attacker in the grass. What happened to a ghost, or for that matter a demon when you killed it, anyway? They were already dead. Of course vamps were already dead too -- they were just corpses that hadn't had the brains to lie down and rot like they were supposed to. Faith glanced up into the bushy trees, looking around for the ghostly bum. So if the Mikado demon had been a ghost, and if she'd killed it, what did it turn into? She passed the edge of a long low gravestone -- and froze. The old wino ghost was on his knees before another black, spindly mime demon -- its face was slightly different from the other one, but it was definitely the same stripe of animal. Its mask was removed, and Wino Man's face was buried to the ears, being swallowed by the thing's hood. Several more mime-men danced between the trees beyond the grisly scene, like vultures waiting for leftovers. _Crap, how many of them are there??_ thought Faith, running toward the scene. She couldn't fight them all, but maybe if she picked off the one eating the wino she could-- The wino's ghostly form dropped to the grass with an almost physical thump. As Faith watched in shock, his form crystallized....and just started sifting away. Like a pile of sand in a wave, he melted. The frozen gasp of horror on what was left of his face held its shape for a gruesome while, as the rest of him melted into muddy, stinking bits of slime -- the same slime, Faith realized with a start, as the snotballs she'd been picking off her gravestone the past three nights. _Well.... damn. That's what happens to ghosts when they die, then... they become those things._ That was kind of worse than oblivion. Being reduced to a lump of brain-dead slime that didn't even resemble a human anymore... Faith didn't have much time to reflect on that. The Mikado demon that had finished off Wino Man had turned its eyeless, faceless hood toward her. Behind him, more of his buddies began emerging from the dark trees, skimming in and out of the trunks; spindly, silent, staring freaks coming after her. Faith steeled herself. Wino Boy might have had the useless trick of speeding up time, but she had something his unfortunate ass hadn't: fire, baby. She flared up, feeling the beautiful flames feed off her ghostly frame; blowing softly through her nonexistent hair, fueled by what would have been her Slayer bod's adrenaline and rage. She smiled at the gangly sticks, feeling -- dare she say it -- alive. "Hey guys," she breathed. "Anybody got a knife I can borrow?" 

****************** 

The horizon sun broke free of the black clouds some hours later, peering its fiery eye underneath them like an old man peeking under his porch, as twilight finally set on the earth. Faith stumbled out of the cemetery gates, fried. Not literally... but in the absence of the good old horny-hungry-hyper buzz that used to come after a heavy night's slaying, she guessed this was as close as she'd get. The battle had been fierce, not unlike fighting a hundred psycho sushi chefs at once -- but she had prevailed. The cemetery was now fairly awash in slimy black fungoid critters, mindlessly rolling around for all eternity. Her doing. And no longer her problem. So long, snotballs. Faith hiked along the darkening street, underneath the choppy black cloud cover, which was being tinged bright fiery orange by the setting sun. She was leaving the cemetery behind, with no regrets. She was fed up with sitting watch at her maybe-maybe not grave. That was for losers who had nothing better to do. She had something. She had fire, for one. She had a mile high from slashing her way through a graveyard full of zombies. She may be dead, may be see-through, may be a ghost... an angry, pissed-off bitch ghost of the wickedest Slayer ever to scuff up the earth. And what were ghosts good for? Haunting, that's what. Faith grinned. Her nothing-cheeks stung in the cold nothing-air. Shot by a cop. Well, how hard could it be to find one lousy cop in a city full of people? Shouldn't be. Especially for an invisible chick who could slip herself right into anyone's body. Shouldn't be hard to track the son of a bitch who killed her and make him so damn dead they'd have to bury his slimy leftovers twice. In the gathering dark, Faith leered. She had never been able to whistle, but her faint nothing-form made a soft, high, almost pleased wailing noise as she moved glidingly down the street into the blackness. Read on to Chapter Two: Bricks Are Heavy  
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	2. Bricks Are Heavy

Eclipse Girl by Shuvcat (c) 2000

A sequel to Walk The Rain. At the end of that story, Faith had fought through the lonely dark world she found herself in after Who Are You -- only to find herself face to face with her own gravestone. The Dark Slayer is dead... but Faith is about to find that death isn't really the end of anything.   
Rated R for violence, language. This is a work of fiction based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which is owned by Joss Whedon, Fox, Mutant Enemy, and the WB. Other entities own the other characters/plots I will be reffering to in the story. I own only my original characters and storyline. 

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Chapter Two  
Bricks Are Heavy

  
  
_I can still smell her._ Buffy's sweat had smelled different from her own, Faith reflected. Occupying B's body had felt like walking into someone's apartment, where they've lived a long time, and you can just smell them. It was more so for Slayers, of course, but Faith remembered it from being a kid, too. She'd had pals she'd hung out with, and they'd all had a certain smell. Not a stink... although that one kid from the projects, he wasn't the kind you wanted to hang around in a stairwell with. But Buffy... even her sweat had smelled... clean. Like all that Orchard Peach Primrose bubble bath she had in her bathroom finally soaked into her skin and affected her glands. She didn't smell salty or sweaty. Just clean. _But I could have gotten that anywhere, anytime._ All the time Faith spent hanging around her, training and fighting with the older Slayer, she'd had lots of time to soak that up. The one thing she really clung to, that really reminded Faith of the time she'd spent walking around inside Buffy's bod, was the way she tasted. Faith had never really thought about the way her own mouth tasted. Not unless she was getting ready for a date, or unless she'd just hurled. It wasn't the kind of thing she sat around thinking about, because most of the time, a mouth doesn't taste like anything. Water. Spit. That's about all. That's all Faith had always thought it was supposed to taste like. _Even her mouth tasted different. Light... not like mine at all. Kind of sweet. Not sugary, and not like when you take a swig of wine, either. Just... different._ Her body had felt lighter. Faith remembered taking a step and almost falling over, because Buffy's body was laid out different from hers. Weight in the wrong places, less weight where there should have been more. Not that Faith was any lardass... she conceded that the difference must have stemmed from B's lack of, uh, attributes up there. Cute she may be, but B just wasn't packin' the jugs Faith had. And it had made her lighter, easier to walk. _No wonder she used to do that bouncy thing when she moved,_ thought Faith. _She's so light, she's all light...._ Faith was dead. She didn't have a body anymore, and didn't have even her own mouth to taste now, much less to relive the taste of someone else's. But she rolled what used to be her tongue inside the airy, open space near where her mouth used to be, and whatever senses made up this psyche of hers, roaming the earth, whatever memory a ghost could have.... remembered. _I can still taste her._

**************** 

Another sunset. (Of which day since her death? She didn't know) found her at the foot of a radio tower, by the side of a long, empty highway. The orange evening sun shone redly off the blacktop and made the tower glow red, adding to its eerily flashing airplane lights. Faith looked to the top of the tower, at the topmost light, flaring on, off, on, off. She flexed what would have been her fingers, had she had fingers. _Okay. You've been wasting time walking everywhere, when we all know ghosts fly or phase or however they get around. Better get it down now, out of the way, so we can focus on the important stuff._ Stupid. So stupid that she had to waste time on this. In the indeterminate time since she'd left the graveyard, to the time she'd found herself here, she had met a few more uglies -- different from the Mikado. One thing that looked like pretty much a charbroiled doberman pinscher, and another that looked like a man with his arms where his legs should be and vice versa. That one had been able to grow appendages where he needed them, and Faith had had a hell of a time killing it, until she finally wrapped its own legs around its neck. Didn't think ghosts could choke to death, but that one had. Usually a good slay released the tension. Usually she'd cooled down by now. She wasn't, and she knew she wouldn't. At the foot of this tower, she was angrier than she'd ever been. The air fairly radiated around her, probably some ghostbuster with an EKG reader would have gotten one hell of a show. _"She's an evil spirit."_ Faith glared up at the tower, hate pursing her lips. _"Willow, we don't have time--" "She possessed you, Buffy! She's an evil spirit and she pushed you out of your body so she could claim it as her own! Even you can't deny that's exactly what she did!"_ The memories of what Buffy had done during her time inside Faith's body were still here. Faith could recall what her eyes had seen, what the gang had talked about, as clearly as if she'd been there... even though at the time she'd been far away. In Buffy's body, planning to escape to parts unknown. _"That may be what she did, but I don't know that she started out... wanting my body. I think she saw an escape hatch and she took it, as usual." "Well, let's analyze this. Is she you now? YES! That sounds pretty possessive to me, don't you think?" "Well, b-by all rights, Buffy's possessing her too." Tara, meek as usual. "Yeah, but--but Faith started it!!"_ Faith no longer had a brain, no physical matter to remember with, but she remembered nonetheless. Buffy's experience being captured, beating the crap out of the Council special forces guys, threatening them with knives, just like...just like Faith would have done. The memories of what Buffy had thought all during those hours...those were here. Faith even recalled Buffy's rationalizing that if they expected her to act like Faith, she might as well go ahead and _be_ Faith. At least to get herself out of here. _And add a couple more strikes against me while she was at it,_ thought Faith angrily. _While I'm back at the ranch tiptoein' around everyone, stuffing my hands in my pits to keep from carving up Red. Trying so hard to act like I thought SHE would._ She had done all that.... all that for HER... and all Buffy had done was act like an ass and give Faith the added hassle of two angry Council guys on her tail. Faith had been looking over her shoulder for the Council most of the run to Seattle, and would have been now-- ...if she wasn't dead. _Damn. At least I tried to make you look good, B. Thanks for nothing._ Faith had no knees to bend, no feet with which to push against the earth. But doggedly she bent, and steeled herself...and sprang. Nothing happened. In her body she would have cleared the first section of tower. As a ghost, she barely bobbled up before settling down to earth, like morning fog. She _had_ to be able to fly. In fact, she had the feeling she'd already done it. That was probably how she'd cleared the distance from Michigan to Sunnydale in so short a time. That made her even angrier. That whole walk she'd been so up, so psyched, thinking everything was fine and dandy with the world and that she was about to turn over a new leaf. _Should have figured that's when the bomb would drop,_ she thought now, bitterly. _What do I keep telling you, girlfriend? Never, never get happy. 'Cause the second you start getting comfy in any kind of happy place is the second it all goes straight to shit. Don't you know that by now, you bullheaded--_ Faith shook her wispy head, focusing. _Stop that. Positive thoughts, stupid._ Clenching her ghostly teeth, Faith glared at the sky, focusing on the top light. On, off. On, off. Jump. She thought of it as a bell. Gym class drills came back to her, the overweight football coach barking orders at her, getting off on watching ten-year-old girls in track shorts shimmy their way up a rope to ring a bell. She'd done it better, faster, harder than anyone. Gym always was her favorite class. Almost killed the fun of dropping out. Up. Jump up. _C'mon, you saw Ghost. All your rage, all your pain. Move that coin, girly._ She leaped, willing herself to rise higher, but all it got her was nowhere. She was straining to put air between herself and the ground, and it wasn't happening. Why couldn't she do this? Why did she have to do this? Why did she have to be dead? _Well, the boss said my days were numbered, right? No big surprise, everyone knows Slayers don't live long. Not like I was shocked or anything._ Faith had been sad, though... deeply depressed standing there watching that tape. Not really because of what the Mayor had said... of what she guessed she should have taken as a slam against her survival instinct. But because she had actually believed, for a month or so there in his employment, that she _was_ going to make it. After all, she had an invincible demon lord backing her up. Something no other Slayer in the history of the earth had, she bet. The Mayor had promised her a long and prosperous life at his side. She might have survived for years, decades. She might have made it. Which of course, meant Buffy had to come along and smash that chance for her, too. Faith jumped, harder, harder, straining and clawing angrily toward the sky. Stupid, stupid, stupid... she had actually thought.... it had actually occured to her, in that second on the roof when Buffy had pulled the knife out -- that maybe B was right all along. Maybe Faith was wrong, shouldn't have gone to the Mayor, should never have gotten up that morning. Maybe Buffy had come here to teach her a lesson, was looking out for her welfare. Maybe Buffy was doing her a favor.... _Yeah, right. And then I woke up. And nobody's there waiting for me, not even B. She's supposed to be so concerned with helping me see the light, but she sure didn't give a damn whether I ever saw daylight again._ She would never forget Buffy's eyes. How wide and huge they looked, the lush color of Mountain Dew bottles, glinting green glass staring down at her hand as it sunk the knife into her, the blood that erupted all around it. Shocked. She didn't think she had it in her. Neither had Faith, frankly. Buffy had hit the roof on her ass after Faith had smacked her; Faith remembered the way she'd sat up and stared. Remembered thinking Buffy was going to save her then, because that was her job. Buffy was the Hero, she did The Right Thing. The faithful dog sacrificing herself, reason be damned. Even the boss had thought so. _Should have been our first warning sign right there, boss. Cause obviously, she didn't do the right thing. She was supposed to give herself to Angel. She wasn't supposed to come kill me. The Hero doesn't do that._ Well, that was what the boss got for being from the Roy Rogers era. Buffy had just stared at her. Those glass green eyes had flitted from Faith, down to the ledge, to Faith, to the ledge. Like five times. She had that much time in the time Faith had waited for that damned truck to clear the block. Faith had even wondered why B was wasting time sitting there, and then she realized... _Faith you're an idiot..._ ...that Buffy wasn't going to save her. Faith lunged violently toward the sky, angry animal noises escaping her in watery sobs. Buffy had been waiting for her to jump. Little Miss Blondie didn't even have the shit to finish it herself. She was going to watch Faith fall and go down to the street and scoop up what was left in a thermos for Fang Boy. Faith had known it in that moment, just as sure as she knew her own name. And even then, Faith had waited. She remembered standing there for what felt like hours, feeling her guts drip through her fingers, her knees getting weaker, pushing it as far as the truck's velocity below, just waiting, mentally pleading Buffy to get up, help her, save her... But Buffy never did. So, Faith fell. Wasn't much point living, after that. Broken heart, meet broken head. Faith uttered a broken, watery scream that echoed uselessly through the forest like a breath of night wind, her claws tearing through her vaporous hair. The air around the foot of the tower was hazy red. A passerby might have thought the sunset's red light was tinting a patch of fog. _I could be alive now. I could be nice and cozy in B's little skin, writing sweet little notes of recommendation to the Council in England. "Oh, please be nice to Faith and don't torture her too much, because I'm Buffy and I say so..." well, maybe it would have taken more than that, but I would've done... something... to make sure they didn't hurt her much. More than she would have done for me. Instead I have to pull the hero routine, and she has to bust out and come back to get me... and I can't ever go back, not after what I pulled, so I run away... to Seattle, because like a stupid rock groupie wannabe I think that's where all the good bands are, and I get shot..._ ...and dead. Because of Buffy. And because some cop in Seattle got a lucky shot off. Another slam, another stupid, never-should-have-happened reason. How did a Slayer get offed by a stray bullet?! That didn't even make any sense. A millimeter to the side in either direction, and she could have been alive now, alive and eating a cheeseburger, or dancing, or shit anything as long as she was living, anything where she at least felt like something more than a wisp of wind... _You're going down. Whoever the fuck you are, whoever you think you are... rookie, vet, family man, captain's daughter... you're gonna be so dead they'll have to bury you in three caskets. I'm gonna kill you so hard your kids'll be in intensive care for months. This is all... your... fault._ She threw her head back, out of her weepy stance because weeping was only for suckers who had eyes. She glared up at the tower lights, hating it, hating everything. _ It's all your fault, B! They're gonna die because of you! The cop, the cop's kids, the whole precinct! All your friends are going down, all you happy assholes laughing and living your lives and still there while I'm dead -- you're all going down, because I'm the Slayer, dammit!! I'm so bad-ass I can kill things after I'm dead! I'm the Slayer! You're all dead, because I'm dead, and you're all going to pay...._ With a scream that rippled the air, that interfered with the Perry Como format the radio tower was broadcasting, that sent squealing feedback through living rooms three miles away... Faith hurtled to the top of the tower. She rocketed up the side of the tower, fueled by pure, bitter hate. Faith clawed wildly at the metal bars networking toward the darkening sky, red flames sparking off her fingers, scratching like a cat slipping off a roof. She whipped out several strands of angry red light. They wrapped around the airplane signal lights like spider webbing, and she stuck there, hanging from the top, the sunset lighting her up like a flame on a candle. Below the earth was cast in shadow, but up here she had a bird's eye view of the end of the day. Faith clung to the side of the tower, laughing throatily to herself, exhausted from the strain of jumping. She could fly now. The knowledge of it had come the way most things did to her -- after way too much force, at the last minute, like jamming a lock that was already an inch from coming undone by itself. It was so simple, she was shocked at how easy it was. _Shouldn't have let me go, girlfriend. I couldn't fly after you before._ Glaring into the searing red sun, Faith let go of the tower. 

******************* 

The earth sped by below her in a flash of green, brown, and blue. States and oceans passed in a matter of seconds. Flash. She hit something hard with an almost physical thump. _Ow. What the..?_ The scenery was cold, dark. Snow fell in soft, large flakes, invisible in the near darkness. And it was silent. The flying must have taken something out of her, she was dizzy, like she'd taken a ride in a possessed Tilt-o-Whirl. A ghostly wisp of hand rubbed the fluffy bump of her ghostly ass. Faith frowned at the strange building facing her, like Hershey's kisses atop short, fat towers. On a flat, cemented expanse, things that looked like soldiers marched, guns in hand, their heads huge and misshapen. _Demons?_ It was too quiet. Her sense of hearing hadn't come back from the flying shift yet. Shaking her head out of habit, trying to move the gunk out of her nothing-ears, Faith tried to project herself closer to where the demon things were marching.... Oh...those weren't heads, and Faith drew a sigh of relief at realizing the things weren't demons...they were Russians. _Russia? Little bit off the mark there, aren't you girl?_ Well, she was new to this flying thing. More like a flea hopping around, she hadn't quite got the landing part down perfect yet. No big deal, she'd just try again. Looking up at the dark-blue snowfilled sky, Faith tensed...and leaped. More dizzying vistas. The curve of the earth, blue and tremulous, flashed before her eyes. Faint stars sparkled in the stratosphere. The ocean sparkled, blue and vast, crashing toward her in whitecapped waves.... Flash. The fronds of palm trees slashed at her face before she hit this time, thumping hard. That landing was getting to be a pain in the ass...literally, she smiled grimly. Faith tried to "sit up", looking around. This place was Spanish. She could read a little of the brightly colored signs on the warm sunny street around her. She'd be a pretty sorry street punk if she wasn't a little bilingual by now. _Casa de Salsa. Fuero militia...._ no more military. Puerto... Oh. Puerto Rico. Cool. At least she was on the right hemisphere now. Now if she could just hit the States, she'd be set. Her hearing still hadn't come back on. That was unnerving; she hoped all her faculties didn't fritz out every single time she jumped. Faith cast a sad glance at what looked to be a nice outdoor cocktail bar on the street across from her, and the several very hot men walking past it. _Yeah, and it doesn't do me any good to get worked up when I haven't got the equipment to do anything about it with._ Her mood was beginning to give her the creeps. She was thinking clearly most of the time; clearer than ever, felt like. Yet back at the radio tower there she'd been nearly overcome by a rage worse than her usual dark moods, and considering how dark she could go, that was saying something. It occured to her that without a physical brain to rein her in, maybe her emotions would go flying out of control for real this time...and out here, she might never be able to get them back. Bleagh. Cheery thought. Faith cast one more look around the soundless, tropical scenery-- She went flying across the street. She hit the middle of the street head first, where she was promptly run over by a car. Faith sat up, shaking her fuzzy head, as the draft from the passing car blew through her. _What the hell hit me?--_ She stumbled to her feet, which seemed to sloosh oddly into the pavement. She could go through matter, it hadn't occured to her she might sink into the earth if she wasn't careful. Faith cast around, looking for whatever thought it could get away with hitting her from behind-- A Mikado was crossing the street. Coming right toward her. Screw that. Faith didn't have time for more kung fu fighting. She took off, her ghostly form billowing out like a sail. The sky exploded around her, the ocean skimmed past her feet. Faith looked behind and realized the damned demon was coming after her, dancing over the waves like some spidery ballerina. She sped up, tearing trails over the whitecaps, but the Mikado came faster, splashing toward her. _Well, if you wanna fight that bad, baby, let's go._ Faith stopped with a jerk, some of her going right on ahead before she tugged it back. She hung over the crashing waves, kicking her red angry energy up, feeling it fly off her form. A huge red snarl ripped out of her, tearing the Mikado across its so-called belly. Fighting on top of the ocean, with flashy magic energy...if Faith could only be watching this, back at home on the big-screen the boss had bought her, this would be a pretty damn cool fight. As it was she got herself thrown, kicked, forced under the water at one point -- where she stayed, not needing to breathe, for some moments, looking up from under the water at where the black shivery form of the Mikado floated above. Then she struck, like Jaws rising up to chomp a victim. She slashed the demon in half with a particularly large red barb, and it fell apart, bleeding into the ocean as it disintegrated, leaving an oily sheen on the water. Her hearing had come back on. The water crashed angrily below her formless feet as she floated there, above the water. There was no land for miles. Faith used to like swimming, but being suspended over the ocean like this suddenly made her feel like she was drowning. Flash. She was off and flying again, propelling herself over the water as fast as she could. Land... and the unmistakable form of the Statue of Liberty sped toward her. She and the Mikado must have fought each other all the way up the coast. _No... I don't want New York, I want the other side._ She was getting it now. She sped up, finally leaving the water behind her. Farmland, the patchwork quilt that was the midwest traveled below her, slower this time, because she was forcing herself to go slow. The grass turned to dirt, black to red, the Grand Canyon yawned below her. _Man, if I wasn't on a schedule here, this ghost thing would be pretty cool,_ Faith thought. She'd always wanted to go to Vegas... Flash. There was a building. It was tall and white, and stairstepped upward in three levels, the last one pointing a narrow white finger toward the sky. The windows were like long slits in the side of the structure, like the holes they used to shoot guns out of in old old fortresses. The place did resemble a fortress.... a prison. The halls were slick, the floors like glass. Had she still had a reflection, she probably would have seen it under her as she moved down the hall. Sparse light filtered in from the long windows. The floor was tiled in broken checkerboard, and as Faith forced her senses to flare out, to gather, she picked up a multitude of familiar -- and hated -- scents. Antiseptic. Medicine. Bleach. Off in the distance, a weird mix of.... electricity, like a lightning storm on the horizon, and formaldehyde... and blood. _Oh, shit. Another hospital._ Faith had had more than her share of hospitals, but flitting out the window didn't seem to be an option this time. Her formless feet stayed glued to the shiny floor, sliding down the hallway like melting butter in a skillet. _Yuk_. The floor didn't seem to be any kind of intensive or trauma care wing. All the doors were shut, and they didn't have knobs. Instead there were metal bars that went across and what looked to be card keyslots on the end. She tried to smear her way over to a door so she could see inside the tiny window. The glass was cross hatched, and there were bars on the inside of that. She peered in, trying to see through the door itself as well. No luck....but she did catch a glimpse of the occupant. Dude didn't really look sick. However Faith could tell, just by looking at him, that he wasn't feeling fine either. He was sitting in bed, ramrod straight, staring with huge eyes at something on the wall...or his TV, it was a tough call. Faith's senses accumulated the smell in the room -- more antiseptic, but not enough to blot out the urine. Very slowly the man turned his head -- and seemed to look straight at her. His eyes got even bigger. Faith jerked herself backward, having seen enough. The man's screams pealed through the thick locked door, echoed down the hall. Her skidding feet tried to slip back toward the room but she'd had enough of that shit. Determinedly, she waded away, toward the two interns rushing toward her -- and past her, though she made sure to time it so they wouldn't go _through_ her -- to the shrieking man's aid. _Okay.... mental hospital. Everyone always said you belonged in one, right? No big deal._ Faith's self rippled with a cold shudder... it was bad enough being alone and screwed in the world when you had your shit together. Being alone and screwed, and not even aware of the fact.... that sucked. She oughta know. Her legs were going without her. She had to watch it, thinking like that and not watching where her smeary ghost self was going. She was slipping right into another door. In the space of a blink, she was sucked through it like a branch through a woodchipper. The small, square room on the other side of the door was no less gloomy and cold, and yet...Faith sensed something familiar the second she entered. More hospital smell, that had to be it, considering she'd been breathing it all those eight months in the coma it wasn't like she-- That wasn't it. There was...what the hell was the word Red always used, aura? That was it. An aura of familiarity here. The cold was so... dark. Lonesome. No one besides the help had come in here for a real long time. The room of the dude pissing himself down the hall had been lonely too, but there had been some visitation there, at least somebody had gone once to see old Uncle Zombie. This place, though...... Faith turned her head and saw a girl lying in bed. The initial shiver that went through her was stilled, angrily. _Get a grip. Just some coma chick. Like you. Alone... unvisited... no flowers.... just like you, actually...._ Faith had somehow ended up crunched in a kneeling position. She got up, or at least made it right side up. This ghost business was getting old real fast. Shimmying and floating and rolling around like some slimy piece of fungus. Resigned, she floated her invisible ass over to the bed. The girl's eyes were closed. Her face was chalky pale, not counting the deep red cuts lining her face. She could have been called pretty at one time, in a weird, babyfaced way. The scars didn't quite ruin it either, though they looked pretty bad. There were older, half-healed scars under them, white and reopened from repeated scratching. Faith noted the leather straps wrapping across the bed, securing the girl's arms to the metal headboard bars. _Okay, unless some sick intern's into bondage, this chick's one deep mental case, if they've gotta tie her down._ The straps hadn't kept the girl from clawing herself; the scars even stretched up into her hairline, disappearing in her pitch black hair. It had been cut recently, and not by a pro: there was a circular burn mark near the top of her skull on this side and Faith bet there was one on the opposite side, too. _Electroshock._ Faith settled on her ghosty haunches. _She's a kid. Can't be much older than me, she looks younger. Somebody's kid, and they left her here. Nobody but the interns have set foot near this room for months. Maybe even years._ _Abandoned. Just like me._ Talk about your dark mirrors. Faith realized this was what her life had been for those eight months; laying there half dead, oblivious to everything, including the fact that the only person to give a damn about her was being slaughtered, was long since dead. Laying there vulnerable, only one bubbleheaded intern's clerical mistake away from suffering a seizure and ending up downstairs in the morgue. Laying there tucked away, while everyone went on with their sunny little lives, happy as long as the psycho bitch stayed unconscious in her dark little closet. In storage, like extra clothes. Like leftovers. Without warning, the eyes in the scarred face opened. Damn, they were huge: deep shiny blue and ringed with thick black lashes, and even darker shadows. It was now Faith saw the girl was gaunt, and that she'd once been fuller, her cheeks were used to having more flesh on them. The girl in the bed tensed head to toe, and she just lay there, like she was flattened underneath something. She was staring directly into Faith. _What do I do? Say something? I'm not even sure she's looking at me. For all I know she's freaking over some dent in the ceiling tile._ "Are you Hecate?!" the girl spoke. It was a bruised, scrapy little squeak of a voice. Hecate? Faith knew that name....a goddess, or a demon, it was really familiar, she knew it from....Willow. One of those witch deities she was always invoking. The goddess of death or darkness or something like that. Faith's nonexistent lips smiled. Hell, maybe she should run with it. Darkness and death was right up her alley, after all..... No, that was dumb. "I'm Faith," she spoke back, uncertain whether or not the girl would actually hear her. It was at that moment Faith realized she hadn't tried to speak with the living up til now. The girl probably couldn't hear her, at that. On the other hand, she knew about Hecate, and if she knew that she was probably familiar with other supernatural stuff, might even be a magical person herself or.... _Or a witch. Damn._ The idea that the little crackpot might be a witch turned Faith off immediately. Of the witches she'd known, she hated both of them. Between Red's perfect-sweet-airhead act, and the mojo she and Tara had poofed out of nowhere to wreck the last decent thing the Mayor had given her, Faith would be more than happy never to see another witch again. And if this kid started in with the earth mother and will and the Three-Fold path or whatever it was, Faith was sure she'd go nuts. _At least I'm in the right place._ The girl was still staring at her. Faith decided to try a little test. "So....what's your name?" Nothing. No answer from the bug-eyed girl. Her lower lip was either bee-stung or recently bruised, it was hard to tell with the long scratch across it, and in any case she didn't seem to have heard. Faith was about to pack it in and bail when finally the girl responded. "Nancy," she rasped. The unexpected shot of relief that went through Faith was fierce. Someone could hear her, someone was talking to her, yeah it was a screwball in an asylum, but damn, it was a person. Never mind it was the kind of lame-ass she wouldn't have given a second thought to if she'd been on the floor dying of vamp bite. Never mind her maybe-being a witch. As of right now, Nancy whoever-she-was was Faith's favorite person in the whole world. Faith would have grinned, had she still had teeth. "Okayyyy...Nancy. You hear me all right in there?" "Y-yeah...I--" Nancy twisted her head, mouth twisting as she tried to get some kind of look at her. Speaking of teeth, the kid had a huge mouthful of them. Her permanently downturned brows furrowed even further. "...Who are you?" "Faith." She tried to hunch down, closer to Nancy's white face. "Can you say that? I bet you can. Faaaiiiiith.... c'mon, sound it out--" "Stop talking to me like that," Nancy demanded angrily. Faith pouted. "Huh. Not five seconds into this relationship and already with the bitching. Gotta tell you, girlfriend, I want the company. But if you're gonna go all high-maintainance on my ass--" "Wait!" Faith smiled. Pretend to leave, and they'll beg you to stay. Well, sometimes. Nancy was staring up at her, tugging on the straps. "Wait... I asked for a familiar," she squeaked. Her voice sounded like she'd been screaming, all worn out. "Are you...her?" Faith couldn't help smiling, though it was probably just the buzz from having someone to talk to. "Familiar? Mmm, I'm familiar with all sorts of stuff, N....what do you wanna know?" Nancy looked as though she was cautious about answering. She flattened herself in the sheets a little more -- and it was now Faith could smell stale sweat, and faint traces of blood. The straps were on Nancy for a good reason; there had been serious thrashing going on in this bed, and not the fun kind, either. She twisted herself a little more, as though in thought. "I want my power back," she rasped. "Cool." Faith nodded. _Power? Don't tell me this little cookie can do serious bad-ass magic._ Faith had been witness to a real pro, the Mayor to be exact, and Nancy looked like she'd been a little screwy even before having her brains fried. Hell, Willow's little galpal was probably more powerful than this one. "You got any clue where you lost it? Cause if it entails me backtracking over twenty miles of freeway, I'm sorry, but--" "She bound me." The expression that came over Nancy's babyish face twisted it in the creepiest way... Faith had tried her "fight" face out in the mirror a few times, wondering how she looked in kill mode...and this chick, she was depressed to say, had her beat all over. Nancy looked about three inches away from a chainsaw murder spree. "That.... _bitch..._ she bound me." Faith nodded again. "Bondage. Fun." She wondered whether even Nance knew what the hell she was talking about. "She was weak," the girl growled, and it really was a growl, an inhuman animal sound. "I was better than her, and she was jealous of me. Jealous!!" Her squeaky voice rose suddenly, it grated on the metal bedpost. "She saw I had power. She saw everything he gave me, and she wanted it for herself, so she took it away from me. She took away my life." Pause. "She BOUND ME!!" Nancy suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs. The shrill shriek echoed loudly in the close, cement room. The bed had moved a few inches on the floor. Even Faith, who was well used to screaming and unhinged people, was put slightly on edge. Nancy was clearly bonkers, there was no doubt now. Faith had never really been around retards or anything like that, though her ma's PCP binges were pretty close to psychotic as the civilians could get. But right here, right now, staring into the girl's wild blue eyes, Faith knew she was staring at a straight up mentally-screwed lunatic. Which depressed Faith more than a little. Because she could relate to every damn thing the lunatic had said. Nancy seemed to settle down, though her small arms were tugging so hard on the straps that bloody scrapes were reopening in the heels of her hands. "Bound.... she bound me," she mumbled. Drool was shining on one side of her pouty chapped lips. Faith felt a melancholy almost as tangible as water soak the air around her. "She bound me, too," she whispered. It was the truth. Buffy had forced her into running away again. Faith had _tried_ to do the right thing, gone against her better judgement and gone back to help those losers in the church. Because she had _been_ Buffy, at the time, and it was what Buffy would have done....and then the real Buffy had showed up, again, to win like she always did. Got her body back, got the credit for icing the vamps, got rid of Faith. Three strikes and Faith was out. She ran. What the hell was she supposed to do? Buffy was such a being of perfect light that she scared Faith away just by her presence. The Golden Slayer was so pure, so good, that she sent evil things packing with a blink of her pretty little eyes. That's what Faith was -- an evil spirit. Something to be exorcised, smacked down, scared off with magic. Faith had crawled away like the unclean piece of filth she was, unworthy of Buffy's perfection, unfit even to lick her fashion boots. Driven out by B's holiness, she had run. All the way into a cop's bullet. Nancy's huge teeth, which had been gritting, were now chattering. "It's c-cold in here," she murmured drunkenly. Icy vapor appeared over her lips, evaporating. Faith's non-form shuddered. The cold was surrounding her, a thick tangible soup that darkened everything; she realized the room now appeared as if she were wearing sunglasses. Her black mood had chilled the entire room. _Check me out. Faith the Poltergeist._ Faith snapped back to the present, as the door to the dark room clicked sharply, then opened. An incredibly fat, butch nurse rolled a cart with one squealing wheel into the room. "Well, Samantha's moving around again, eh? Jesus H. Christ, girly, don't you ever shut up?!" Faith kept an eye on Bertha as she loaded up a hypodermic with a jar full of something. "Wonder how much of this stuff you've run us out of the four years you've been here," the nurse grumbled. She had a too-short helmet-like bob and owlish glasses that bugged her buggy eyes even more. "State-funded drug addict, that's what they oughta call you, mm-hmm. Stop beating around the bush." With a yellow sneer Bertha came over to the bed and pulled Nancy's jammie pants down. _And this one looks like she enjoys beating around the bush a little too much,_ thought Faith derisively. She watched as the nurse finished squirting Nancy full of whatever was in the needle, wondering what kind of sedative-- _ "Let me go! Let me GO!!" The heavy male intern hit the floor like a barbell, but there were two more to take his place. She could fight off any number of vamps or demons... but these weren't demons, and that blaring fact in her head meant that she was losing her fight against them. Couldn't they see she wasn't Faith?! Didn't they know Faith would have killed two or three of them by now? She watched in miserable panic as a doctor came toward her with a needle. "I have to go home! She's with my mother!! No!!" What did they have in there, anyway? The drug the Council had given her hadn't even made her feel this loggy... the realization came to Buffy, too late, that Giles had doubtlessly notified the Council about Faith, and that the Council had... probably... "You don't understand," she whimpered, thinking of Mom, alone with a girl she thought was her daughter Buffy and it wasn't because... "She's taken my body..." _ Faith's non-form shivered, rippling with the memory of what her eyes had seen, what Buffy had felt through her. She'd been scared. Faith didn't think B was afraid of anything... "I see they've finally cut the heating bill off the hospital budget," the nurse jabbered on, oblivious to Nancy's jerking away from her fat fingers. "Jesus H. Christ, it's cold enough to freeze a horse's manhood off! Not like you can feel it though, huh Samantha?" She patted Nancy's static cling hair like she was a stuffed pet. "I have a familiar now," Nancy spoke through gritted teeth. Whatever drug she'd been shot with seemed to have a calming effect on her. Her grin was drunken, sloppy. "Sssh-she'll kick your ass." "A lawyer?" The stupid old broad hadn't even heard what Nance had said, although Faith granted it was kind of hard to make her out right now. "Well, that's all well and good, sweetpea, but you'd have to prove a lot in court. Unfortunately for you the security cameras were the first things to go around here. But you're going to sue us, mm-hmm." Her voice was prim, clipped, sardonic. "Because the state just cares so much either way. I'll let you in on something, cutie: there's people going through a lot worse in this world than you are. Much too much for anybody to care about some little slut who couldn't keep her money out of her nose. Understand me?" She leaned over the girl's bed. "You're nothing, miss priss. You're high-maintainence welfare trash, and there nothing to keep me from letting a few air bubbles into you next time." The bitch nurse sniffed primly. "It'd be one less bed for me to break my back changing, that's for sure." "She'll kick your ass," hissed Nancy. Her face contorted in an almost cartoonish baring of teeth, making her look almost like one of those Mikado guys. "Get her, Faith!! Make her bleed!" Faith had floated back from the action a little, resolved to watch from the outside. _What do I look like, your guarddog? What's in it for me?_ But she was already moving toward the nurse, even as she thought it. There wasn't much in it for her, of course... nothing but the self-gratification of some self-righteous bitch getting hers. That would be fun. Faith hadn't had a good slay in a long, long time. _Whoa, girl._ Faith tried to hold back, cringing. Her brain... where her head used to be was crackling. Emotions falling out her ears, spazzing out of control. Used to be she could keep a lid on it, but now, when her every thought was just energy that could fly off and kill something without anything she could do about it... and they were still connected to her, that was the problem. Tearing her in several directions like taffy. It was one thing to be a Slayer and not give a crap who you killed... to not be able to control the fire and hate bubbling up in her... but it was something else when it had a life of its own and was trying to rip you apart-- Nurse Ratched was leaning so far over Nancy now that Faith wondered what was keeping her from jumping right into the damn bed. The hypodermic was raised threateningly, clutched in her fat right hand. "You've got pretty eyes, Samantha," the nurse spoke suddenly. "It'd be a shame if something were to happen to one of them." Nancy might have been insane, but the implied meaning wasn't lost on her. Her blue eyes were huge now, and frightened, her head pressing into the pillow as she tried to shrink away from the needle, which the crazy old bitch was lowering toward her face. "Faith," she whimpered. No.... dammit, Faith didn't want to play hero anymore! Everytime she did something good, it invariably came back to kick her ass. There was no reason, nothing to push her into helping out now. Who cared if Nancy had a eye out? What did it matter? Nobody had stuck up for Faith when she'd been in that hospital bed, and.... Faith's ripply sigh chilled the already cold corner she was cringing in. ...and she remembered what it was, to be alone, and unprotected, and helpless. The old broad shrieked as she hit the floor on her ample rear end, the needle clattering on the tile. She'd been shoving Nancy's face so hard into the pillow that N's cheeks had been squashed together. Now Faith floated over the bed, her legs trailing wispily through sheets and springs, looming invisibly over the nurse. _Go on, get up. Give me a reason to cook you like bacon, Bertha._ Faith had no idea if the nurse could hear her. But after adjusting her glasses, after looking straight through where Faith was hovering... after a long moment of wondering what the hell, she struggled to get to her feet. Took more than a couple tries, too. Faith watched closely as the nurse grabbed the cart she'd wheeled in, glaring at the whimpering girl in the bed. For a second she looked like she might actually go back to torturing her. But apparently even the nurse wasn't that stupid. With a final huffy sneer, she turned, unlocked the door, and wheeled the cart out. It was what she said before she left that got Faith. "I don't believe in witches, girly." Slam. Faith snickered, the noise barely more than a whisper to her own hearing. _I don't believe in ghosts,_ she thought with an ironic smile. Nancy hadn't stopped cringing, even though the pressure was off her. She stayed flattened in the bed, her tiny body as tense as if she were being beaten by a gang. Faith realized as she gazed at the girl that she could see something like an aura, radiating off her-- a network of patterns all over her bruised and bedburned body. Not physical scars, more like spiritual ones. She floated closer, straining to hear what Nancy the maybe-witch was muttering through her bruised lips. Her soft voice was choked, miserable. "...why you forsake me, your daughter... why you abandon me, your servant... send me a familiar, strike down my enemies..." Faith curled up in a cold, empty ball, crouching at the side of Nancy's bed, listening to the girl's druggy ramblings. She didn't seem to be able to leave the room. It was cold, and dark, and painfully lonely, and Faith felt like she'd come home to her old Boston street. She felt familiar here. Familiar. Two miserable, fucked-up welfare chicks. A witch and a ghost. She'd wanted to be in Seattle by now. She was wasting time... but she couldn't leave, and anyway... it wasn't like she didn't have all the time in the world now. Her bottom melted to the cold tiled floor, Faith sat watch over the bed for some days. 

****************** 

Faith would have left anytime. Even a ghost had to have better things to do than sit over a psycho's bed and watch her drool. Unfortunately, the first time Faith tried to get up and find some interesting paint drying, she found she couldn't move. Her ass seemed to have melted, in its fluffy ghostlike way, to the floor, and there she stayed, stuck watching Nancy for weeks and weeks. During this time, she got an earful of Nancy's history. Nance had apparently spent all of the past four years tied into her bed, being waited on/terrorized by the hospital staff. She had come here four years ago after losing her witchy powers, and was now unable to defend herself like she was used to. Faith didn't learn much about how Nance had lost those powers, only that some "bitch" had nullified Nancy's skill out of "jealousy". From what little Nancy mumbled about her past life, however, Faith got the distinct feeling that the nameless "bitch-witch" had been on a disturbingly Buffy-esque trip. It sounded a lot like whatever coven Nancy used to hang out with finally decided she was too dangerous to stay a witch, and had ditched her. And in the process of being stripped of her powers, Nancy's brain had been fried. _Gotta love those underdogs,_ thought Faith sardonically. After the first few weeks, however, Faith would have paid a lot to be able to get up and walk out on Nancy, who alternated between screaming, snarling, being abused by any present staff member (Nurse Bertha seemed missing in action, incidentally), and begging Faith, in brief moments of lucidity, to free her. Faith found herself wondering yet again whether she'd somehow fallen through a trap door into Hell. Being trapped in a room with a tortured screaming soul sure sounded like the Hell Liz used to rant about. The few actual doctors who came in from time to time seemed pretty devilish. One dude was the kind of optimist-perky that the Mayor could only have dreamt about. Grey-haired, buttoned down, spouting endless remarks about what Nancy "might" need, how much medication she would be taking the rest of her life, how any sort of real life was long lost and she had no hope to be anything more than a near-catatonic bowl of whimpering sludge. He made this particular pronouncement over Nancy's bed, and took no notice of the gnashing of Nancy's teeth or the whimpering noise of futility she made. Out of spite, Faith hung over the doc's shoulder and made him feel a vicious chill the whole time he was there. On one hand she didn't care about Nancy at all.... but pronouncing someone pretty much dead while they were within earshot -- she knew how that could sting. Weeks and weeks passed. Out of sheer insane boredom Faith began doing laps around the ceiling, making thousands of circles over Nancy's head. She tried, as a last resort, to melt into the wall and got as far as her shoulders, getting a good look at the electric wiring and crumbling cement. At this point Faith realized that to some degree her nightvision must be lingering with her, because she could see in spite of the lightlessness within the walls. And the fact she could slip Nancy's room enough to poke her head though the wall at all -- that was a kick. Maybe if she kept at it, she'd be able to leave entirely soon. For that matter... it had occured to Faith, more than once during long grating nights of having to listen to Nancy snore, that perhaps... if she tried to possess Nancy, the way she'd possessed that cat, back in the graveyard..... .....but no, Faith had enough bodies strewn in her wake. Again, it wasn't like she gave a damn what happened to Nancy either way -- at least the witch wouldn't snore dead -- but over and over, Faith rejected the idea. Wasn't like she'd be able to get out of a locked room any easier inside Nancy's body. "So what kind of fun do witches have?" she asked offhandedly one evening, when Nancy seemed a little more sane than usual. Nancy's fritzy hair crumpled underneath her head as she moved it on the pillow. Her white cheeks creased as one of those gummy grins peeled her face. "Just the usual -- turning people to toads, hypnotizing people with rock music." She spoke this with bitter sarcasm. Faith sneered. "Shit. The ones I used to know never did any of that. Just whipped up stuff to jerk me out of other people's bodies." "You were a shapeshifter?" Faith looked up at Nancy's impassive face, wondering if she'd even realized how matter-of-factly she'd asked. Talking to a witch was a bizarre experience sometimes. "Well... for a coupla days, anyway," she finally grumbled. "Not that it helped any. They found me out -- don't know how. They must have caught my fashion sense." Nancy was silent at first. Then, suddenly, a wispy noise that sounded at first like whistling bubbled into a low, loony giggle. "You must not have been very good at glamour spells," she grinned. Oh, Nancy thought Faith had been a witch. The psycho was pretty clear on the fact that Faith was a ghost now, but hadn't quite been able to grasp the concept of Slayerism. No big deal. Nancy's head had drifted toward the door, glancing to see if any sneaky docs were on their way in. "Wanna see how it's done?" asked Nancy through a mouthful of teeth. "Bet I can do it better than you." "Knock yourself out." Faith sniffed, bored already. Usually it took a good half hour for her to wish Nancy would fall the hell asleep and shut up. She wondered when one of the nurses would come in and shoot Nance up with some sleepy juice -- and then she stopped short, staring at Nancy's face. The psycho had tugged her wrists as close to her face as the straps would allow, and was now grinning up at Faith with glittering eyes. Her fingers fanned out, into claw-like shapes. As Faith watched, Nancy fluttered her fingers over her own face... and something started to happen. The girl's teeth vanished behind a tight, pursed set of lips. Her black unwashed spikes rippled once, then vanished, blanketed by ugly light brown hair. Faith stared as buggy eyes puffed into being -- first on Nancy's forehead, above hers, and then "sliding" down Nancy's darkening skin and masking her own eyes. Faith floated back slightly, taken aback by the fact that she was now staring down at Nurse Bertha, grinning up at her from Nancy's bed. The door to the room clicked loudly, and slid aside, allowing two male docs to enter, lugging a cart. "--have been talking to the head office?" one said as he pulled the cart to the side of Nancy's bed. "Just this morning." Faith felt her whole form shiver as his friend walked right through her. "You know those people -- always late." He snickered, and Faith could feel... actually, it felt like a physical incarnation of the color grey. She didn't know where _that_ thought had come from -- sounded like something Giles used to say -- but she went with it. The guy was standing inside her, and she could feel his... spirit, or soul, whatever. He felt grey. Just a boring, lifeless grey. She glanced back at Nancy. The Bertha-mask the girl had conjured up was gone without a trace, neither doc had caught it. But the fact that N had been able to do it at all... she still had powers. Faith's mind raced. The kid had witchy powers and she didn't even seem to realize it. None of that bothered Faith as much as the fact that she couldn't seem to float up to the ceiling, where she usually retreated when Nance had company. She couldn't peel herself from the grey doc's body. When he walked, she was stuck following him. Stuck to him. Faith angrily tugged, trying to rip her ghosty self from the grip of whatever grey thing the doc carried. She hung from his back, and an image of the twisted hole-shot Terminator robot from _Terminator 2_ came to her mind. "I really don't think they realize our situation over there," Grey Doc chuckled. "No, that would require actually getting off their asses," replied the doc by Nancy's bed. Nancy had smartly decided to pretend she was asleep, though she couldn't help jerking a little as the doc injected her with sedatives. Faith, suctioned to his friend's body, was unable to do anything except watch as the two men tugged the cart toward the door. Shit, what happened now? Faith had a gruesome vision of her ghostly self tearing apart like a paper doll as the doctor she was glued to walked out of the room she was incapable of leaving. The rectangle of light -- Nancy's room was constantly left in the dark -- loomed menacingly toward Faith, who jerked violently, in a last-ditch effort to rip herself from the doctor. The hallway burst around her-- "--given any indication as to the, uh, housing issue?" The doc she was attached to-- the one she was following as he ambled down the hall-- asked. Faith looked around at the surrounding hallway with the kind of relief maybe only desert people feel when they find the water hole. She had made it, she was out here. Time to head out for parts unknown. Screw Nancy and her little witch problems. Faith fell out of the doctor's body, with the sudden ease of walking through a beaded curtain. Wicked awesome. Now she could-- "--it's a go." The doc she had just fallen out of was speaking. "Word from the office is the bed will be freed up by the weekend." He had nodded toward Nancy's room when he'd said it, and it was enough to make Faith stop in her ghosty tracks. Freed up? "What about the next of kin?" asked his friend. Grey Doctor sneered. "People don't come to be in Meadowbrook because they have family, doctor. Room 102's mother, in fact, signed the papers with word that anything that could be done should be." Another sneer. "I was on call the day they brought her in. God knows where she got the money to check her daughter in here. Very, very low class from the clothes. Looked a little drunk, as I recall. She hasn't been back since." _God, Nance. You and me got the bitches of the litter, didn't we?_ First Doctor clicked his tongue clinically. "Anything that should be done. I assume that means the usual." "Yes." They turned a corner, leaving Faith behind in the clean, empty hall. "Tragic thing. We need the bed, though. Funds being depleted and all....." _......oh, damn, do I hate hospitals._ Faith turned in the now-empty hallway, the white light surrounding her coldly. At the end of the hall was a field of barred windows. Freedom was right over there. There was bloodshed waiting in Seattle for her. All she had to do was gun her ghostly ass out of here. There was absolutely no reason she shouldn't. Except.... Nancy was laying back there, drugged out, oblivious to the fact that the staff was about to "free up" her precious bedspace. And to the fact that, fried she may be, she was still kind of a witch. Faith hated Buffy for making her empathize with deserted chicks in lonely hospital beds. With a sigh of disgusted resignation that made her entire form ripple, Faith turned away from the windows, watching the black and white checkered tile speed beneath her as she floated back toward room 102. She still didn't know why she should care about the little witch. But Faith would be damned (well, more than she already was) if the poor lab rat got screwed over while she still had power enough to get them both out of there. _See B? You're not the only one diggin' into the dark arts to save your sorry ass._ Faith blew through the door, glided to a halt over the bed she'd been holding vigil at for the past few days. She glanced at the buckles reining Nancy into her bed, stretching her out like a rack. They were simple buckles, obviously designed with the belief that a drugged up person wouldn't be able to figure them out. Faith could undo them no problem, but not without hands. That left only one alternative. She didn't know what to expect. What if Nancy's brain was so messed it ended up affecting Faith? What if Faith couldn't get in there? She had only possessed that cat, not a person before. A cat, cute as it was, didn't have a hell of a lot to think about, leaving plenty of room for Faith's psyche. What if possessing a person was completely different? _C'mon, it happens. You saw The Exorcist. Even Giles said he'd seen some possessed people. It can get done. Go for it._ She thought for three seconds about waking Nance up and filling her in on the situation. Telling her the plan, and why exactly Faith wanted to do it. That would have been the nice thing to do. Screw nice. Nance would get used to the idea quicker if she didn't have a choice. Quick, before she lost her nerve... Faith slopped her form, which suddenly seemed watery, slippery... over the side of the tousled bed. Balancing herself over Nancy's body, staring down into her shiny, bloodshot eyes, she felt almost like she was sitting on top of her. Solid became liquid as Faith's metaplasmic self settled, melting into her. _Shloop._ Darkness, like before, only somehow...darker. Hotter. The flashes, when they came, cut like peroxide in burns, slashing across Faith's eyes. It was dirty in here; black and grimy, soiled, skanky. Like sleeping in someone's filthy apartment. With wet hair. Faith was deeply depressed to recall Buffy thinking almost the same thing, upon waking up in Faith's body. Nancy's eyes snapped into focus. Her chest rose half a foot off her bed with her sucked-in breath. "Ohhh-- oh God-- what the f--" Pain, it was everywhere. The lines in the ceiling whipped back and forth as her head twisted from side to side. It felt like the time she and Sarah and the girls had cast the spell to help them breathe underwater; they'd spent hours walking around the bottom of the high's school's Olympic-size pool. Tight chest, pressed lungs, pain that lingered after the spell wore off. One weird thought after another shot through her eyes, making it difficult to concentrate. This was definitely NOT like possessing a cat. "A cat?!" Nancy's bruised voice rattled painfully in her throat. Her mouth tasted like moldy peanut butter, someone get this girl some Listerine.... _Nancy?_ Her fingers clawed air, turned to fists, jerking at the straps. Pain laced her wrists where they'd been cut, over and over. "What the hell's going on? Faith?! What are you--" _Calm down._ Her vision blurred and cleared suddenly with a roll of her eyes, everything snapped into place suddenly, although it was still no less grungy-feeling. _Nance, calm your ass down, it's just me. I'm... I possessed you._ Obviously not something Nancy wanted to hear. "Get out!!" her mouth belted, biting down on her tongue accidentally. Faith reeled at the taste of blood in her... in _their_ mouth. They. They were one now. Faith could "hear" everything Nancy thought, heard every unspoken bitchy remark the girl was thinking about her. _Well, that's not nice. You keep trashing me, girl, I might just leave you here._ "Go away!" Nancy was sobbing now. She was in pain, the possession hurt. Little bit like screwing for the first time. An image of a guy, some Johnny-Depp wannabe, thrusting her in the back of a car at a high school football game, flashed through Faith's consciousness. Nancy's memories were Faith's. She had gained access to a whole other lifetime of thought and experience. None of it good. Added to her own psyche like two different Kool-Aids poured into one glass. _Great. Check out Faith, version 2.0._ Faith struggled to stabilize her...self, to calm Nance down enough to make her hear. _Nancy, shut the hell up and listen to me. I'm not doin' this for my health, understand? I need a body, and yours ain't the prettiest but you'll have to do. Fact is, you just lucked out, girl. Because those docs out there are about to pull your plug unless I walk you out of here._ She looked up at her bound and buckled hands, sneering at the simple restraint. Wriggling out of cuffs and buckles while in bed -- this felt familiar, she thought with an inward dirty grin. She could work her way through this in no-- "Pull the plug?" The drugs were working, her movements were loggier, now that Nancy's panic attack was subsiding. The docs _would_ have chosen now to drug her up. "What're...what...." Faith pushed her arm forward, trying to get enough slack to work the buckle. The insane thoughts in her head buzzed past like annoying flies; no wonder they hadn't bothered binding her better. For someone this loony, buckles were challenging enough. _The hospital's sick of payin' your rent, all right?_ Without even meaning to, the exchange between the docs out in the hall, the one Faith had listened in on, ran on replay through her memory. _Word from the office is the bed will be freed up by the weekend.... tragic thing...._ Nancy saw, and heard, and knew what Faith said was the truth. That was handy. Save a lot of time explaining stuff that way. _Okay now? You with me?_ "Y-yes." Nancy's head nodded, watching blearily as her own fingers worked with unnatural dexterity, pushing the bar through the hole, tearing the strap loose. She rolled over, hands immediately going to work on the other buckle, undoing it in half-time. She sat up in bed, every muscle in her back creaking. _Jeez, don't they ever let you out of this thing?_ "Only to change the sheets," Nancy answered wearily. Her bare feet hit the cold linoleum. Faith was overcome by a flashback... the last time she'd walked away from a hospital bed, the cold hospital air brushing her half-dressed body... She walked over to the door. Here was a real challenge: deadbolts. No getting out the window, either. She stood on tiptoe to look out the tiny window set in the door. The hall was empty beyond the crosshatched glass. She settled on her feet. _Guess we'll have to wait for someone to let us out,_ Faith communicated. _I'll be straight with you, N -- we're gonna have to duke our way out of here. How's your right hook?_ As if in answer, Nancy raised her skinny, malnourished arm. She swiped through the air with a punch that wouldn't have knocked over a boxing clown. _Not good, girl, not good. I've got to teach you some moves._ The door suddenly clacked, that angry metallic click of the lock being electronically opened. Faith and Nancy had just enough time to turn around, as the door burst open. On the other side stood Nurse Fatass. The huge owl eyes grew even larger behind the thick glasses. "How'd you get out of your bed?!" she demanded, reaching for Nancy/Faith's wrist. Inside her new shell of flesh and bone, Faith's self rippled with something damn close to goosebumps. Without thinking, without even planning it, Nancy's right leg jerked up and spun her small body around. The heel of her bare foot caught the nurse hard in her fleshy cheek. With a yelp of pain, the older woman hit the floor like a sack of bricks. Ow. Faith was dejected to find that had actually hurt, her foot was slightly numb. No big deal; Nancy was standing hunched over, staring down at the nurse laid out of the floor, mouth dropped open in wonder. "Holy shit!!" she squeaked, awestruck. Faith's self glowed in the warmth of Nancy's brain crackling with pride and jealousy. _Ain't nothin', girlfriend. Check this out._ Without warning, Nancy's arms shot out and jerked Nurse Bertha over, so that she was staring at the ceiling. Faith stepped over the large body, spread out before Bertha as if to sit down on her. "You like that, Bertha?" Nancy's tiny voice spoke warningly in the tight room. "Enjoyin' the view, you overstuffed bitch?!" The nurse's expression was deeply satisfying. Faith grinned, both inwardly and outward, at the look of sheer terror on the gal's ugly face. "You-- can't-- help!!" This was directed up at the door, to anyone out in the hall. "Code eleven!! Code eleven! Patient episode! Pat-- no!! Don't do it! Please--" Faith grabbed the door and slammed it shut, hearing the electric click as the lock came. Next doc who checked in on Nance was going to get a hell of a surprise. Faith turned her grin down on her prisoner, shooting her tiny fist into the woman's fat neck. She watched with something close to pleasure as the nurse's tongue pushed out of her teeth, as she gulped hard, trying to breathe around Nancy's hand. "You're gettin' your wish, Bertha," Nancy's throat rumbled as Faith spoke through her, high on adrenaline. "Least you're not gonna have to bust your back over her bed anymore." The meager strength in Nancy's hands was entirely her own, but Faith was pushing it, using every muscle she could feel in these little arms. Nancy's body didn't have enhanced Slayer strength, but even a little wimp's bod could be deadly if used the right way. And if Faith knew anything by now, it was how to fight, even with sub-standard equipment. That's all Nancy's body was to her, as she choked the nurse into half-consciousness -- a tool, to be used as a weapon. She was giggling. Faith hadn't noticed, but somewhere between shimmering heat waves of red she realized that her throat was making a hoarse, chuckly noise, the sound of Nancy laughing at the show she had a front seat to. Laughing at the old nurse finally going limp and giving up underneath her fingers. "Be a shame if something were to happen to your breathing, nurse," she got out through giggles. Faith glared darkly down at the body, which lay tumbled on the cold floor, lit eerily by the light from the hallway. No big loss. What was one more to her body count? Who cared if some old cow nurse got killed by her charge, a psycho witch? What difference did it make, really? _The guy I offed was no Gandhi. I mean, we just saw he was mixed up in dirty dealings..... In the balance, nobody's gonna cry over some random bystander who got caught in the crossfire...._ Not even me, thought Faith, trying hard to focus on the heavy breathing. Breathing. She was taking in oxygen. The cleansing ritual of gasping for air. In and out, girl, in and out. Just like sex. Nobody gets hurt. Nancy was still giggling, raspily, as they backed toward the door. Faith's control over the girl's voice and movements faded in and out, too. "You really are a Hell's Angel, aren't you?!" Nancy got out, appreciative. _Girl, if I got my hands on Hell's Angels.... they'd be workin' for me._ Faith turned Nancy's head toward the door, hearing something out in the hall. Clicks.... The door shoved open with a metal scraping noise. The doc who came in looked a close cousin of the Grey Doc. Of course, the first thing he saw was the body of Nurse Bertha, blocking full opening of the door. "What the-- dear God!!--" Nancy's tiny fist shot into his face, powered by Faith's fighting instinct. The doc went flying, though not as far as he would have flown, had Faith been back in her old bod. No problem; the young mental patient stepped over the nurse's corpse, out into the hallway. "Sorry," Nancy leered. "God isn't in right now. If you leave your name and number though, He'll be ignoring you for all eternity." With a laugh, she turned her eyes down the hall, where three more docs -- assuming docs wore body armor -- were rushing toward them. _Great. Back-up's arrived on the scene._ Faith flexed the hand that had dealt Grey Doc Two the blow, wincing at how the recoil was lingering. Damn human bodies... She forced Nancy into a protocol attack position, communicating in visual pictures what was going to happen. _Just let go, okay?_ Faith could feel scattered twinges throughout Nancy's body, flashing in protest when Faith tried to take command. _Just relax and let me fight 'em. I can clear a path outta here._ Nancy didn't feel too convinced. "You sure?!" she whimpered, just before the first medic reached them. Faith didn't answer, didn't have the strength to spare. She fell back on her old standby -- rage, and the mental runthrough of how an attack like this should go. Foot to the chest, elbow to the back of the neck.... _Ow. Ow, ow.... damn, ouch._ Explosions of too-sharp pain bloomed over the human body she was inhabiting as Faith took out the first attacker, watching him go down in a flurry of broken teeth and blood. That took entirely more effort than it should have, she thought. Forcing her adrenaline and rage at feeling pain into a barb, she attacked the second guy, feeling the third guy bash her over the head with something in an attempt to stun her. Trying to ignore the screaming that was coming out of her throat, Faith shot her fist into stomachs, chests, beating the second doc into a run. After taking another punch, she finally flew around and reared her fist back, ripping it full into the third doc's face with all the strength she possessed as a Slayer. Slayer strength, human hand. Not good. Not unlike putting the force of a jackhammer behind a pretzel stick. It dropped the doc who was trying to knock her unconscious, but it didn't help. The pain that burst through her arm was the kind she hadn't felt in years, though it wasn't unfamiliar. Faith had suffered her share of broken bones at home before becoming the Slayer. Afterward such injuries had still hurt of course, but their pain was dulled, pillowed.... and after the hazy nothing-feel of ghostiness, the pain she felt now was flaring in bitchforce. She knew, without even looking at it, that her -- or rather Nancy's -- index carpal, metacarpal, whatever they called the palm bones was snapped neatly in two. And the scream that came from her throat was Nancy's, as well. For a horrible second, Faith was sure the dumb cluck was going to collapse right there in the hallway and curl into a whimpering ball over her broken hand. _Run, you stupid--_ Nancy uttered a cry like a bawling brat. "It hurts!!" she shrieked, vocal chords scraping. Her face was scrunched in a grimace of extreme pain. "You broke my hand! My hand's broken!!" _Your legs aren't,_ Faith burned the thought back. _And if you want to keep the other unbroken bones that way you'd better start running em! _ She glanced down the hallway through tearfilled eyes -- yet more medics. And these ones... had tazers. _Ooh, cattle prods. Hurt me, baby._ Inside the loony girl's body, Faith jerked her head toward the door at the end of the hallway. _See that door? Get moving or those dudes behind us are gonna give you a lot more pain than a busted hand to worry about. And if they don't, I will! Now MOVE!!_ "Oh, God...." Nancy's good hand rose to her fritzy hair, tangling in her tufts. The twinkie just wouldn't move. Faith was fed up. _Nance... fine. You're not gonna walk us out of here, at least shove over and let me do it._ The whole hallway went red as Nancy's bare foot took one step back toward the door. "I can't...Faith, it hurts so much--" The cattle prod guys were almost on them. With a shove that felt, weirdly, like pushing through a virgin -- a tremor that shook the girl's body head to toe -- Faith took over. The girl in the hospital jammies took off bolting toward the open door, inches ahead of the stun guns. Bare feet slapped on the shiny linoleum floor as Nancy's body shot down the hall, out of the door, onto the hard dirt and stiff grass, under a darkening sky. Rocks poked holes in her bare feet as she ran, but Faith ignored the human body's slashes of pain and kept running. Over the field, thru an icy cold stream, over another field. Into the woods. Read on to Chapter Three: A Cheap And Evil Girl  
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	3. A Cheap And Evil Girl

Eclipse Girl by Shuvcat (c) 2000

A sequel to Walk The Rain. At the end of that story, Faith had fought through the lonely dark world she found herself in after Who Are You -- only to find herself face to face with her own gravestone. The Dark Slayer is dead... but Faith is about to find that death isn't really the end of anything.   
Rated R for violence, language. This is a work of fiction based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which is owned by Joss Whedon, Fox, Mutant Enemy, and the WB. Nancy from the film The Craft is owned by someone else, not me. No copyright infringement is intended. 

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Chapter Three  
A Cheap and Evil Girl

  
  
Night in an unnamed, large city. The crying, half-naked girl limped down the empty city street, cradling one hand. Any passerby would have thought she was insane, as she kept muttering a steady stream of obscenities to herself as she walked. Coming to rest against the cold red brick wall, she sobbed miserably, sinking to the dirty sticky pavement, her one good hand tearing at her short black hair. Faith wasn't sure how long she'd run. The pain was everywhere now; on the soles of their feet, shooting up their aching legs. Months of being tied into bed left the old stems ill-prepared for a long cross country run. The night air was painfully chilly on their bare skin. Their back ached, their hand was throbbing -- really, really starting to throb and pulse, shoots of white hot agony inbetween the ongoing dull ache -- and now she was feeling the beginnings of a migraine from Nancy's constant bawling. Their brow was scrunched in a downward furrow, it rounded out the full-body pain perfectly. _Nancy, shut UP. It's your own fault! I told you to loosen up, let me fight 'em, but no. You've got some witchy mojo left, ever occur to you to use it? Hell no! Shit, if you'd kept quiet like I told you we could have busted into the keep and lifted enough morphine for all of L.A. But no--_ "My fault? MY fault?!" Nancy's ragged shriek echoed off the building across the street. "You stupid, pathetic _bitch!_ You broke my hand and you don't even care!!" The back of her head slammed against the brick wall so hard that she uttered another scream. Her scalp ground painfully, up and down, into the hard cement surface, until the skin began to go raw. _Don't.... EVER.... call... me.... pathetic._ Faith sent the thought burning through the girl's skull. _Ever. Say you're sorry?_ "Suck me," Nancy growled through gnashing teeth. _No? Huh._ Nancy's head began to bob faster, grating harder. _Are you sure? C'mon, you can say it. Sorrrrr-reeee......_ Blood was seeping on the wound she was opening up in the back of their head. Faith realized this was a very stupid way to get anywhere; she was feeling the pain as much as Nancy was. Probably all kinds of crusty nasty shit on this wall getting in there too. Yuk. Nancy's gritting teeth ground with the pain. "All RIGHT!!" she finally screeched. "Sorry, I'm _sorry!!"_ The shout pealed through the street, echoing down into the lamp-lit darkness. Nancy's head came away from the wall, leaving sticky bits of black hair behind. _Good girl._ Her good hand took the broken one up. _Now we get a cookie. Hold still._ Nancy sniffled, scowling at her hand. "I hate you." _Take a number._ The tiny fingers felt gingerly over her swollen palm, feeling out the sharp protruding bump in the middle, a grotesque knot of pain. Nancy screamed again, even at this grazing touch. "OW!!" Faith resignedly positioned her fingers. Good thing it was in the middle of the palm like that; it looked to be a clean break, and she could actually do something about it. _Get ready to scream some more, girlfriend. I'd tell you not to look, but I kinda have to watch what I'm doin', you know?_ Without any warning, and gritting her mental teeth, her fingers pressed down hard on the jutting bone. Scream after strangled scream bounced off the walls, repeating ad infinitum as Faith cracked the bones of Nancy's hand back into place. 

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The impromptu field dressing was nasty, and hastily done, but it would serve the purpose. As long as they didn't whack their hand out of shape again, Faith figured it ought to start knitting over the next few days. Damn, did she miss the Slayer bod. A break like this would have been a speed bump to her superhealing system. Living in Nancy's body was extremely uncomfortable, and not just because their muscles were bearing serious bed-burn. No, it was the simple fact: Nancy was not a Slayer. Even a month or so of being dead wouldn't have been much for Faith to bounce back from if she'd only had her old body. Living in this one....she felt weak, lighter than air, as though a good stiff breeze would knock her over. The worst part was that the feeling was familiar -- she remembered it from before her calling. Being human. Being weak. The city was newly dangerous to her now, because she, along with Nancy, was a vulnerable, smaller, easily-jumped girl without weapons, without strength, without even decent shoes. That had to change, and damn fast. The army surplus store was deserted, as Faith expected. Places like these weren't much on security since all the crap was second hand in the first place. And just in case the door she made Nancy break in through did have some alarm on it, Faith planned to have grabbed everything they needed long before the cops showed up. _There's one good thing, at least;_ she thought darkly. _Not like I have to worry about them looking for my description anymore._ _Okay,_ she spoke inside Nancy's mind. Maybe the running commentary would help, and anyway she had to have something to break up the freak's constant whining. _First thing to go is this damn gown. Might as well be runnin' around in one of those County Mental Hospital shirts._ Faith did a double take as they just then moved past a rack full of bright orange t-shirts, bearing numbers on the back and "Maximum Security Penitentary" in big black letters on the front. _Crap. And people used to say I had no fashion sense._ Nancy's bare and dirty feet limped along the cool store floor, in the semi-darkness, moving between the ghostly racks. Her good hand grabbed a long vinyl black trenchcoat off a rack, then a black cotton tee from a bin. "I like black," her squeak sounded, echoing in the dark store. _No argument here._ Next were some butt-ugly camoflage pants and -- thank the gods -- combat boots. Beautiful, wonderful combat boots. There was even a rack of makeup, the incredibly cheap ninety-nine cent kind that soured in the sun, but a chick had to grab glamour where she could. Tiny fingers snatched black nail polish -- _nail polish? We're gonna be painting our broken hand??_ -- black eyeliner, and a dirt-colored shade of lipstick. Faith disapproved. _Only goth freaks wear that,_ she thought. _Get some red, girl. Go for some color there._ "I never wear red. It doesn't match." Nancy uttered a snicker at her monochrome wardrobe. _Too bad,_ thought Faith, forcing her hand to grab a blood-colored tube. She noticed the longer she occupied this body, the more she could kind of control what Nancy was about to do. It was a struggle to force her to do something... but she could make tiny insinuations, influence what moves the girl made. She stuffed the lipstick into her bundle, wondering if Nancy had even realized she was doing it. They moved on -- for a crappy second-hand surplus outlet, this place was pretty well stocked. There were even knives. Mostly wimpy little switchblades, but some hunting knives too. Without hesitation Nancy shoved her hand through the glass case and pulled out the biggest deer-gutter she could find. A snickering laugh echoed through the store. "Every girl oughta have a big one," her voice giggled. _Ow. Next time, wrap your hand up. We've only got the one._ They would need a weapon, Faith thought on a sub-level that (she hoped) Nancy couldn't hear. No doubt the cops were already checking out the murder up at the hospital. She wriggled their fingers around the weapon, reveling in the memory of another blade, another perfect fit. Along with these thoughts came other, unfamiliar... equally-familiar ones: hefting a knife to the sky, a rod for lightning of higher power, a magic wand conducting witchy wills..... Up front by the cash register were two cases of jewelry, and the girl paused here, looking over the treasures. Most was crappy junk you could get out of a vending machine -- rings with eyeballs, adjustable cheap metal -- but there was real sterling too, Harley Davidson buckles and chains. Nancy's good arm raised, encased in the tee-shirt. She smashed the case, glass crashing down next to the jewelry. Brushing the shards away, she reached in and plucked out a nosering -- Faith realized at this point that her nose was pierced. She was of two minds about nose piercings. On some people it looked extremely bad-ass and cool, but on others -- most, actually -- it just looked like they hadn't wiped their nose after sneezing. Gross. But like it or not, she now had a pierced nose, and watched as Nancy's fingers put the ring in -- no easy trick with a four-year-old hole and one busted hand -- then reached back to the case to grab a finger ring bearing a five-pointed star. "My religion," she croaked reverently, slipping the heavy ring on. _Whatever._ Faith turned their eyes elsewhere, looking up and down the rows for some tattoo rings, maybe a jaguar or-- A snake. A silver winding snake ring. The gleam off the ring bloomed into a shiny star as the girl's red eyes brimmed once more with tears. "Oww," Nancy swallowed with the sudden, uncalled-for lump in her throat. "Faith? Why are--" She stepped back, wiping her face in shame. _Nothin'. Never mind._ She turned, walking away. _All that stuff in there'll turn your finger green. Let's get dressed and get the hell out of here._ The girl padded into the back, where there was sure to be a restroom. A grimy light flicked on, and the smell that reached her newly- alive nose was pretty gross, but Nancy's arm set the clothes down on the closed toilet and began to shed the hospital gown. It was now Faith took the opportunity to check out her new body. Short, by maybe a half-foot than her own had been; smaller chest for damn sure. There was a broken, blurry mirror over a rust-stained sink, and as Nancy miserably eased her injured hand through the sleeve of the trenchcoat she caught sight of her face in the jagged pieces of the glass. An involuntary spasm rocked Faith's ghostly self. Where her head was joined to Nancy's, it burned, sweat prickling at the temples of their skull. _Thousands of shards of tinkling, shimmering glass crashed in her ears. They fell like snow, razor flakes, all that was left of a whole shot through with years of pain, and neglect, and abuse, and betrayal.... being stripped, bound, tied to a bed and smothered with a pillow. Two witches struggled in a hallway as debris flew around them like a tornado.... two Slayers struggled on a church floor underneath the cross.... screaming and pounding and rage and I'll kill you, you disgusting murdering bitch I'll kill you I'll kill you--_ Faith struggled hard to see past the blinding red ache flooding her sight. Through the haze she could see Nancy's baby face, cracked in half in the mirror and scrunched in rage as she flattened into the restroom wall. "No...no...." Nancy wailed, freaked out by the mirror image. Frantic, Faith forced Nancy's spasming brain waves together, squashing them into a manageable rank and file. Using her own sanity (scary proposition, there; like using a strainer to cup a cracked glass) she gathered up the witch's fraying psyche, holding her in, holding her down. This _hurt,_ dammit. Faith was forced to feel everything the witch was feeling; helpless under a wave of rage and hate that bowled her over like a red hot ocean wave. Hatred at _her,_ whoever Nancy was fighting with there in the hallway. Hatred at Buffy, coming to kill her rather than offer her own slender little neck to Angel like she'd always promised. Hatred at all of them -- Willow, Xander, Giles... Sarah, Rochelle, Bonnie.... _They tricked me! It's all their fault! They plotted this whole thing! They planned stripping me of my power the whole time! Jealous! I'll kill them!! _ Faith thought the words were pouring from her/Nancy's throat like blood, but she realized it was only the volume inside their own head. And as much as part of her rebelled against it... as weak a threat as it was coming from the little witch... Faith couldn't help agreeing with it all the way. _They planned this. They wanted me dead. Probably threw a beer bash when they heard. Probably hunted the new Slayer down and shook her fucking hand off._ The yellowish bulb plugged into the ceiling had sparked out. Faith only noticed when she finally forced Nancy's squinting eyes to crack open. The cold dirty floor bit into their ass cheek, and their facial cheek was smeared against the equally disgusting toilet seat. A last formless whine leaked out, but Nancy no longer pressed her bones into the wall, and the red haze was going away, too. Faith would have been breathless from holding off Nancy's seizure, but she had no breath. _Okay, what now? You like Rainman, we have to keep away from mirrors too?_ She couldn't see now -- but this time it was because Nancy had screwed her eyes shut again, her hands pounding against her head -- the bad one, too, and Faith had to pour some of herself into that flailing arm to keep it from busting up the bones again. The darkened room flashed by as Nancy's eyes blinked over and over, reliving whatever memories she had of her power being skinned like a peel off her. The dark bathroom was briefly lit up by a mass of sparks -- Faith looked up to see the burned-out bulb had exploded, a small flame licking the foam tile. She did that. She used to do it all the time, Faith had a memory of Nancy's mom constantly arguing with whatever slob was camped out on their couch about paying the electric bill. _She bound me. Sarah bound me, but she didn't realize. Cut up a brain, it never works the same. She shouldn't have let me go crazy. She didn't know a binding spell wouldn't work the same on a brain that was no longer--_ Faith fought the skin-crawly sensation, chalking it up to whatever filth might be on this floor, or this toilet. The boss would've had a fit. _Nance, suck it up, girl. They're gone, ok? The mirror ain't gonna get you. Get up._ Nancy didn't, for a long time. But after a while she finally sniffled, gritting her teeth savagely in the dark, and pushed herself to her feet. "I'm going to get her," she muttered, her large lips barely moving over her grinding teeth. "She thinks she's never going to pay? Anything you put out, you get back three fold. Every witch knows that." Faith waited through the mass of runic symbols and witchy images she was seeing in Nancy's mind-eye. _That's all good, girl, but ain't you forgetting something? I'm rentin' you out, N. You belong to me right now, and until you drop me off where I wanna be, you're stuck with me._ The resulting wave of bloody images didn't scare Faith. Hell, she saw scarier things in the last Nightmare on Elm Street flick. _Let's just say the last chick who sold me out ended up in bed. Not in the fun way, let me add. The phrase 'two holes to the jugular' mean anything to ya?_ The light from the outside was filtering in the bathroom, a little. She could see Nancy's face faintly reflected in the shattered mirror, which -- thankfully -- didn't make her lose her head this time. The scratches were still there. _Gotta get some astringent on those, Nance. Some makeup too. And some sun. Jeez._ Her skin was the kind of rubbery, dull white that made her look unreal, like a cartoon character. Almost the same white as the whites of her eyes would have been, if she hadn't been crying for the past two hours. Her pitch black hair stuck out from her head in fritzy spikes. Her good hand rose, fingers clawed slowly through her hair, trying to smooth it down with the grease from days of it being unwashed. _Can't walk around lookin' like an escaped mental patient or anything._ Her bruised lips rose, peeled back. Two huge rows of teeth and a few gums flashed at her. Talk about cartoonish. Nancy's grin was like staring at the god-dang Cheshire Cat. In fact Faith could only think of one person who could have come close to matching the freakish looniness of that grin, and that was the Mayor. _Damn. We're one scary broad._ The distant whine of sirens suddenly wafted through the cold washroom. The girl's head jerked. "Cops," squeaked Nancy. Faith tried to radiate a sense of calm. Huh. Imagine that. Faith, the levelheaded one. _We'll go, hang on. Can you kind of....uh...._ "What?" Nancy's frizzy head jerked, toward her reflection. "We're gonna get caught! What do you want?" Her fingers reached toward the smashed mirror, tugging out a hunk of glass, carefully so as not to cut up her hand. Without a word Nancy tucked the shard in her pack. _Okay, freakshow, let's go out the way we got in._ She made her way out of the store, feet freshly strong in their new boots, and stepped calmly out into the alley. _That's it, walk slow. Just another pedestrian, no need to look at me...us._ The sirens were coming up the side of the store. They were going to be seen, and soon, if they didn't find some cover. Blending in with the crowd only worked when there was a crowd to blend into, the alley was deserted. Nancy caught sight of a sunken stairwell, however, its door boarded up, window smashed, glass covering the bottom steps. It was here she ducked down, huddling at the bottom in the pitch dark. They listened as the cop voices murmured in the distance, shouting over the broken door, the lost merchandise. A set of feet thumped past overhead once, twice... and the second time, a dark form appeared at the top of the stairs. Nancy and Faith kept very still. Faith was used to keeping still. She used to be able to keep so still she didn't even breathe. Now she didn't need to breathe, and though Nancy did, she didn't seem to. The figure above them paused, listening. The form was awfully quiet. No shouts to the other cops, no static on a walkie talkie. In the slightly lighter darkness that surrounded the black shape, it was even kind of hard to tell where its arms were....or its head..... Nobody breathed. A shout in the distance, and the form moved off. No response, nothing. It just backed away, and was gone. Eventually, the voices died out, the engines turned on and grumbled away. The cold darkness of early March and the distant white noise of a city at night sank in on them. Faith missed her nightvision. It would have been good to see who....or what...the black shape had been. There was faint light from above, from a far-off streetlight, but she still couldn't see much. And Nancy wasn't walking. _Nance?_ Silence. Creepy silence. It was one thing to be alone in the dark, but it was another to be in the dark with a smartass who thought being silent and creepy was funny. It was another thing still to be inside that person, and still get no response. _Nance, knock it off. Say something._ "I want my mother," Nancy's scratchy voice suddenly sounded in the dark, eerily. Deep, lonely melancholy permeated through the air like a bad smell. Nancy's memories bombarded her at too-close range, Faith could see everything. She could see the blonde, trashy woman N called a mother, clothes hanging off her in rumpled disarray, stinking of cigarettes, squawling at bum after bum on the living room sofa of a double-wide in some trailer park somewhere. Screaming at her daughter for never being at home, for being a disappointment and a nuisance... and yet... there were wistful memories in there, too. Laughter, happiness, the day they'd come into a ton of money, courtesy of Nancy's witchcraft. Luxury... Faith sighed at the familiar glow of moving into a nice new apartment, buying a kick-ass red convertible. Pride. Nancy's pride at being able to do that, give this gift to her mother, for whom she'd never been anything but a mistake, a disappointment. Now Mom would see, now she would love her daughter. Faith sneered inwardly at this wishful thinking. It didn't happen that way. Everything just got out of hand... and Nancy was beaten, flailing, being strapped down, screaming for Mommy, for the Goddess to come get her, help her, help me daddy help me I'm falling-- Faith shook her head. Her senses reeled, her psyche nodded back and forth inside the flesh and bone of Nancy's skull. Felt weird. Like watching a pencil wobble and look rubbery when you waved it in the air. Some bad-ass witch Nancy was. Sitting in the dark whining for her mommy. _I want my daddy,_ Faith thought darkly. _And my Buffy, but tough shit on all three counts._ The stairwell was icy cold, but Nancy was so zoned she didn't even seem to notice. "Where's your dad?" she mumbled softly. _No....no more past, I promised._ They were in enough pain as it was. She avoided thinking about the Mayor anymore now, if she could help it, because every time she tried to remember..... _I think I killed him._ Faith liked to think of herself as firm. When she did something, she did it all the way, no holding back. Gonna bungee jump? Do it off a helicopter, not a building. Going to drink? Vodka, straight up, screw the coolers. Gonna turn evil? Go girl, and kill anything that gets in the way. If nothing else, the one thing she ought to be able to count on was her own beliefs. Since she didn't believe in much of anything, the few things she did cling to had to be solid. She'd had enough of people double crossing her to know that one thing she didn't want to be was a fake. A liar -- fine. A mercenary, okay. But she would never betray herself, and anyone she found herself foolishly taking a shine to fell under that umbrella as well. Buffy was one. The Mayor was another. That should have been easy. Two people wasn't too much to hope to protect, was it? Yeah, right. That was the thing. Faith had sworn up and down she wasn't going to be good anymore. Being good, trying to do good, only led to pain and misery, and she knew it. But this damn Slayer deal....it was like it had a mind of its own. It did good on its own, even at the sacrifice of anything she cared about. What she remembered of those eerie, blinding-white coma dreams made her ill, because she had a feeling the Buffy in them hadn't been a dream. That the Slayerness running roughshod through her veins had done something stupid -- like help Buffy out. As usual, screw what Faith wanted. Poor Buffy and the greater good was at stake. How could Faith ever possibly hope to take a stand on anything, when she couldn't even trust her own mind? The fear, the guilt raging in the pit of their belly was something Nancy probably couldn't have given two craps about. But since Faith was stuck inside her, they were her feelings too, and she had no choice but to sympathize. "Sorry," her soft little squeak muttered. "I killed my stepfather, too." A pause after this strange pronouncement. "What was he like?" Faith's iron resolve not to remember was skewing inside Nancy's screwy synapses, and the memories flashed, loud and proud, as bright as the other ones. The whole three month drama unfolded in the space of a few seconds. The Mayor looked better in her memories, Faith realized with a start. He hadn't really looked the way her recollection was showing now, hadn't been that young, or that soft in the face. There had been a glint, this ever-present psycho gleam in his eyes that was totally missing from her slide show version of him. She wondered how she could see it now, and not when it was happening. Of course, shit had been going down so fast then... It wasn't like she hadn't known he was evil or anything. Her memories of everything she had done, everything he'd ordered her to do, were true and painted in ugly clarity. No, she had known what he was, and exactly what she was doing when she was doing it. That was where Buffy didn't get it. She and Giles, wringing their hands over how to snap poor stupid Faith out of her "brainwashing", how to suddenly open her eyes and bring her back to the light...crap. Faith wasn't brainwashed. She hadn't done one single thing for the boss that she wouldn't have done on her own eventually. Nobody held her hand. Nobody. Nancy's breath escaped her in a long, exerted sigh, as the sparkling images -- the malls, amusement parks, mini golf, soft pink dresses -- drew to their bittersweet close. "That's so nice," she murmured, her voice a weary scrape. "You're lucky. My father wasn't like that." Mine wasn't either, Faith sub-thought, but she humored the girl anyhow. _What was yours like?_ Instant images, brutal and stinking of beer, of blood from the beatings, the constant fights between a fat, white-trash old bastard and N's mom, screaming at each other at all hours. Faith's self recoiled from the barrage, the sounds and sick feelings all too familiar. Nancy felt, and laughed, at Faith's cringing. "That wasn't him," she muttered darkly, staring a hole into the brick. "I never had a father, never wanted one. My last one.... he got what was coming to him, the son of a bitch." And like black, slinking oil, Faith got a front-row view of what had happened to lardass: dying in the back of an ambulance, his heart frozen up, gripped in a black icy embrace by....Nancy. Faith could see the black, sticky tendon of energy, the way it had extended from the witch to the old slob, and the chilling expression on Nancy's face as she had emotionlessly squeezed the life out of him. _Wow. You do good work, freakshow._ Nancy's teeth bared happily at this approval. "So how'd yours die?" she mumbled. _Bad question._ Faith hadn't been there, of course. At least whatever sadistic powers-that-were had spared her that particular image stuck in her head. She'd gotten accounts, though, snuck into the city library during that first hunt for B and read up on it -- the truncated, official press version, anyhow. In a way, it was worse. Faith had a gruesome imagination. Waves of fire and black death shot achingly through Nancy's temples. Nancy's face screwed up at the bloody, fiery recollective. "Wait....ugh..." Her fingers knotted in her hair, trying to push the spiking pain away. "....you're saying... he was a real demon?" Faith didn't like thinking of him like that. That whole demon business had never made much sense to her, even after he told her what her place was in it. She'd gone along -- hell, as long as she was provided for, she didn't care -- but if she had to think about him, it was as he'd been those last few weeks, the few times his attention had been dragged away from his pet project. He had been normal...almost human, a couple times there. Like Buffy, the first few weeks after their initial distrust of each other had faded, she'd been funny and sweet and almost like a normal, non-Slayer type human being.... Nancy didn't appreciate this insight. "A demon," she repeated, trying to get Faith back on track. "You said he was a demon? For real?" Faith nodded immaterially, coming back to earth. _Yeah, he was. Tried, anyway. Made it about five minutes in before....what?_ Nancy's blood was rushing, Faith could feel it. Her adrenaline was coming back up, and the iciness in their toes was starting to be a problem. She was laughing. "Faith....don't you get it? This is perfect! This is like... destiny, fate, giving us a second chance!!" Fate? Hell, was she going to start in with the witch stuff now? _I don't know what you're talk--_ "What was the name?" Nancy was almost breathless, rocking back and forth on the cold step. _Name? Name of what?_ Nancy uttered an exasperated sigh. "The demon he turned into!" Faith didn't get it. _What's the difference? I told you, Buffy blew him up. He's been dead since--_ "It doesn't matter!" Nancy's head was shaking so hard her frizzy hair flew. "Look...if he was a demon, he can be summoned. A witch can summon a demon inside a pentagram and make him do whatever she wants! Faith, don't you get it?! He could give us anything, I mean he could give me my powers back! He could grant you a new body!" For the first time, the black tapestry surrounding Faith seemed to let up, ever so slightly. It could work. She wouldn't have given Nancy's wacky ravings a second thought, except that she knew -- she KNEW -- that the witch was right. It could actually work. Giles had told them about the exact same thing, and Willow had even joked about doing it -- to which Giles had given her one of those disapproving looks that shut her up right away. Nancy was laughing heartily now, a real witchy laugh, her head thrown back, her teeth baring. "That's it!! We can summon him, I can summon him, and he'll unbind me! I'll have my powers!" Faith's surge of hope at the first ray of light coming at her in months was so fierce it nauseated her. It was like some twisted Wizard of Oz. _I'll have a body. The Wicked Witch gets her powers, the Tin Man'll have a heart, and we'll all skip off down the yellow brick road. This is too perfect. It can't possibly work._ And yet.... it wasn't like they had much left to lose. Deep inside her lodging, Faith's ghostly lips smiled. _Guess we're off to see the wizard, Dorothy._

***********************

They broke into another shop. Cops in this town didn't seem to be awake tonight, or they were off busting crack houses or something. The shop was one of those earthdance places that sold wiccan supplies and serape dresses and incense. Faith's hackles rose at the mere sights, the smells, that were so familiar from her time with Giles and the witch bitch. But she sucked it up and watched as Nancy's tiny fingers grabbed one weird item after another off the counters. Faith tried to take some confidence in the fact that, fried she may be, Nance at least acted like she knew her stuff. "Chalk, for drawing the circle. It's gotta be white, otherwise the demon might slip through. Candles.... black, red, white. Earth, blood, spirit. What do you know... the Daemonomicon Abridged. Thank you, Cliff Notes." Nancy giggled as she stuffed the book into her coat. Faith would have helped, but didn't really know what to do. She figured she ought to be sending off some... good vibes or something. She'd never been good at that. People just seemed to get edgy around her and run for cover. She tried to sound sincere as she thought: _That's awesome, N, but I thought you said you couldn't do magic anymore._ Despite the face trick she'd pulled in the hospital bed, Nancy's statement about being bound was true. Faith could see from inside her just what had been done. A part of herself -- of them -- was frozen up, rendered useless. Like someone tying both hands and then breaking them. Nancy had once been able to do serious wicked shit with that tied portion of herself, but not anymore. To Faith's surprise, she found herself hurting for the witch. She knew all too well what that was like -- to be given incredible power, to be kicking ass with it one day, and be reduced to a shapeless, nothing-shadow that couldn't even pick up a flower the next. Nancy's inner self tremored, and Faith could see that too: a black, shuddering hate directed at whoever'd done this to her. "She took my powers," she grumbled hatefully. "She didn't turn me into a retard. Not for lack of trying, though." The voice scraping Faith's vocal chords was filled with bitter fury. "S'long as I can read the damn text and draw the damn circle, I can summon the damn demon, so just chill, okay, ghosty?" Faith tensed, her brief twinge of sympathy snuffed out. Fighting back her first impulse, which was to pull the little witch's tongue out from the inside, she took a deep, mental breath, counting to ten. _Hey, whatever, girlfriend. You're the expert._ Shrugging it off as Nance went about her business, their eyes passed over some spices in the background. Those reminded Faith of the fried apple pie at McD's, the kind they warmed up under the lamps all day and served in a box. Faith loved those pies, and for the first time in months, she could physically feel her stomach starting to growl. _Hey, Nance, think you can hold down some solid food there?_ Apparently not. Without any warning, Nancy's hand froze halfway to a rack of ornamental candleholders. And she threw up that afternoon's hospital lunch all over the tiled floor. _Oh... shit. Or puke, more precisely._ Faith wrinkled their nose as they reached out for something, anything, to wipe their mouth on. The ceremonial altar cloth they ended up grabbing looked expensive, but at least the stain wouldn't show much on the funky tie-die design. _Okay, what happened there? You pregnant or something? We have to start carrying around barf bags now?_ Nancy sniffled hard, wiping her face violently. "I don't....I'm not feeling good," she muttered. "It's okay...I'm okay now." Throwing the cloth on the floor, she reached over the puddle and grabbed the tin holder she'd been going for. Faith didn't like this. Now that she felt, really bothered herself to feel out Nancy's body, she could tell something was wrong. Her stomach was a trainwreck, but anyone's would be after four straight years of hospital food. There was something else. The drugs the asylum had pumped her full of were still winging through their system, but Faith could "see" those, with her mental image of how this body was laid out, and those shouldn't be wrecking this much havoc on-- There was something black like poison spreading from the back of Nancy's skull, down her neck. It had reached the base of her spine and was speading out, toward her lungs. It already had her stomach, radiating out from a long narrow slit-like stain in the abdomen, that's why she was hurling. It wasn't a disease, in fact the more Faith looked at it she could tell it wasn't any physical thing at all-- _Shit. It's me._ She was looking at herself. Her ghostly presence showed up on Nancy like metal on an X-ray. She was killing Nancy just by being here. Same as the cat. She'd run that kitty through the mill, as far as it would go, and when she left it....when she'd used it up....it had died. Faith was careful to keep her little revelation below the radar, not wanting to tip the witch off. Number one, it would scare her off their mission, which Faith didn't want to do at any cost. Number two, it would just get Nance freaked over nothing. And number three..... Faith felt the blackness squirm in her nothing-belly like a cold, wet snake. She didn't care. Why should she? What difference did it make to her whether Nancy died? As long as she lasted long enough to try out this little summoning thing, and if it actually worked....well, Nance was a lost cause anyway. Mental people didn't last long on the streets, not as far gone as she was. She'd fall prey to a drifter or a vamp or some other predator within the week. Faith had done her a favor by sticking with her this far. And she needed a body. As long as she had this one, she was going to ride it till it burned out, like a car with bad oil. _Yep, that's me. Bad oil._ This sucked. Faith was exactly what Buffy had made her, an evil spirit stealing a body for its own. No better than any of the monsters she'd once stalked. Faith hated this, hated herself, not out of any moral sense but because of the fact that she had been demoted, fallen so far as to be one of the things she used to wipe out with a smile. _No....no, that's not what I am. I won't be for much longer, anyway._ On the off chance the boss actually did appear before them, and supposing he actually did give them what they asked for -- and he would, wouldn't he? He'd been Gift Guy. He wouldn't mind, probably be thrilled to, after being set free -- then maybe Nancy could heal herself with whatever powers she'd had. Maybe even fix whatever had been broken so badly upstairs that they'd had to strap her into a loony hospital for four years. And Faith... She'd have a body. Her own body, with no crazy little witches renting out space. That was undeniably attractive. And she could still go to Seattle, look up her so-called killer. Wasn't much that could beat out standing in front of a scumbag who'd thought he'd killed you and ripping his heart right out of his ribs. It wasn't about... being square, or being even. It didn't even matter that if she got her body back the whole matter would be moot. The point was... Nobody got away with killing her. Nobody. So Nameless Guy was going down. Check that off. What next? Next, next....she didn't know. She might go look up B. That'd be fun... no it wouldn't. Everytime Faith saw Buffy, Buffy killed her. Inside her shell/prison, Faith shuddered. _Hey... Nance, what're you gonna do once you got your wild voodoo magic back?_ Nancy had been raking piles of junk that she didn't really seem to need into her pack. Her arm, moving almost mechanically out and in, out and in, slowed, raking empty air. Her head tilted, staring at her moving arm out of one corner of her eye. _Um....Nance?_ Her left eyelid started twitching. Swipe, swipe. She drew her scarred lower lip under her teeth, sucking in the stale taste of congealed blood. "What am I gonna do," her little squeaky voice murmured. Flash. Three fair witches sat in a circle, lit by gold candlelight, on a plush decorated rug. In the middle of the circle was a low black plate, something like a wok. The three witches handed each other stones with runes written on them -- one girl to her neighbor, one girl to the one across, in a strange pattern of arms. Willow smiled at her sisters, handing over the rune for wisdom. Tara took it smiling, handing her neighbor the rune for love. The third witch -- Faith didn't know her or her name, but she was glaringly, bitterly familiar. She looked like a young, preppy school version of Scully on the X-Files, and Faith hated her without knowing why. With an identical prissy smile she took the rune Tara handed her and gave Willow the rune for strength. The bowl in the middle of the circle was full of black snakes. Scully-Witch reached out and took one of the writhing forms in her hand. Smiling that beautiful smile, she opened her mouth and let the serpent slide into her mouth and down her throat. Willow took a snake and ate it smiling, the tail disappearing between her lips. Tara fed hers down, head lifted, throat bobbing as the snake went down. Flash. Three dead witches lay on the rug amid the candles. Their golden hair arrayed around their heads like halos, wide eyes shimmering in the candlelight. The black snakes had escaped the bowl, freely slithering over the floor, over the faces of the dead girls. Flash. Faith, her non-stomach doing cartwheels from the disgusting vision she'd just seen, was aware of Nancy's mouth grinning so hard that her cheeks hurt. Low, gutteral laughter was bubbling from her throat. "When I get her," she mumbled between giggles. "When I get her...." There was heat below, in their pants, and Faith thought at first that Nancy was actually getting turned on by the thought of killing the Scully witch. Then she realized no, she had just wet herself. _Christ. Now I need Depends._ Nancy's chin hit the counter she had been swiping, her hand tangled in her hair as her hoarse cackle echoed off the walls. 

********************

They lugged the makeshift bag of magic ingredients out of the store, into the back alley. _So where's a gal go around here to call up some demons?_ asked Faith. "You got me," murmured Nancy, coughing. The tie-dyed sling she was carrying her broken hand in itched, Faith was having a hell of a time keeping her from scratching. "I don't even know where we are." _You don't even know what city you're in? You said this was L.A._ "That's where I used to live." Nancy scowled up at the red night sky. "But...this doesn't look like it. I don't..." Her voice trailed off, as a river of muddy, nonsensical thoughts obliterated whatever she'd been trying to say. Exasperated, Faith dug around in the girl's head for clues. There were a handful of drug-clouded memories of being tied down, sedated, carried around... an ambulance ride to somewhere... a hospital, though that could have been anyplace. It was too hard to say. Generic city scenes, and they didn't tell her anything, so Faith left it off. She realized, at that moment, they were hiking near a junkyard. _Let's do it here. You said you needed fire, and we ain't got matches. There's sure to be somethin' burning in there, though._ Nancy slithered her scrawny body between a gap in the chicken-wire fence, dragging the bag with her. Taking a look around the dark, filthy yard, the tiny girl picked her way between mile-high piles of garbage and rusted car parts, tires, grocery carts, broken bikes, washing machines. The dark sky flickered redly over the piles, there was a ready-made fire in there somewhere. Soon they found it, a trash-barrel fire in a semi-clean clearing, between a stack of smashed TVs and piles of oily, glistening carburetors. Luck was with them; no bums were hanging around warming themselves. Nancy hiked toward the blazing barrel and dropped the bag, hitting the dusty ground on her knees. Flipping open the pack, her good hand pulled out one thing and another, setting them up. _Nance?_ "What," her little voice grumbled, arranging the candles in a circle. _Remember that mirror we got out of the restroom? Can you kind of....uh, you wanna set it up somewhere?_ "What for," Nancy asked aloud, scowling over the dirt. They should be doing this on concrete. She couldn't draw a circle here with chalk.... Faith felt deeply stupid. _Well, this is gonna sound weird, but... I kind of like having a face to look at when I talk to you._ Well, Nancy might not be the prettiest picture, but somehow it lessened the weirdness of being inside her. As long as Faith could look over and see somebody there... she could at least pretend she had her own body, that Nancy was a separate companion, instead of speaking and then feeling her throat make someone else's voice. She could feel her -- their -- lips bare a huge grin as she watched the good hand reach into the pack and pull out the shard of mirror. Nancy's scratched white face appeared, a leering half-shell shadowed by the orange firelight. Her black eyebrows arched and her icy eyes sparkled madly. "This better?" her huge teeth gnashed. Yeeg. _Yeah, that's a huge improvement, thanks, there._ Faith watched as Nancy propped the large shard against a nearby stack of junk, then returned to her work. She went to the blazing trash can and let the end of a stick of wood burn, then brought it back and lit the candles with it. The circle was eventually drawn with sand that was a slightly lighter shade of yuck than the rest of the dirt. An inner circle and a pentagram were drawn, and Nancy decorated the space between the two with a bunch of weird symbols --runes, Faith remembered -- all the way around. At the end there was about a foot of empty space. "What was the name?" Nancy's voice asked at last, a handful of dirt in her hand. _Name?_ Oh, yeah, the name of the demon. Faith racked her brains.... she couldn't remember. Nancy sat back on her knees, exasperated. "You can't remember the guy's name?" she grumbled incredulously. _I'll get it, gimme a second._ God, he'd talked about it enough -- well, truthfully, Faith could remember the Mayor mentioning the actual name of his beloved snake demon maybe twice, if that. He'd always been a little secretive about it, and she hadn't really been listening. Damn, the whole plan was going to go to pot now, just because she couldn't remember one lousy demon name. It started with an O, she was sure, something like Olive... Olid... or was it an A? She'd never seen it spelled, either.... Nancy's mirrored face glared back at her, extremely impatient. "I'm not going through all this shit to summon the demon of olives," she muttered derisively. _Olvikhan._ The name came to Faith out of thin air. If she'd believed in guardian angels -- or guardian devils -- she would have thought some outside force planted it there. She was a hundred percent sure too, which was funny, considering she still didn't have clue one to how it was spelled. _The name was Olvikhan. Devourer of Nations, possessor of all-knowledge, somethin' like that._ The Mayor had ticked off all the names the creature had, but of course, Faith had only half been listening. "Ol-vi-khan," Nancy repeated slowly, her grimy hand carefully spilling the sand into something like letters in the dirt circle. The weird thing was she didn't even ask how to spell it, just took off scrawling. And when she was done, it actually looked about right. "Okay?" _Five by five._ Faith felt like they'd gotten done decorating a cake. _Now what?_ Nancy raised her head and looked in the mirror with what was supposed to be a reassuring leer. "Now we ring up the son of a bitch," she answered sweetly. Faith had a bad feeling about this. She didn't know why -- wasn't really nervous about the summoning itself. Wasn't like she hadn't seen demons summoned before. Anticipation fluttered in her/Nancy's belly, threatening to make them both sick again. In a few minutes, Mayor Wilkins III might be standing before them. She was going to see him again... or the thing he'd changed himself into, at least. Faith didn't know what to think of that. Was she afraid? No.... not really. The boss might have been evil, but he had treated Faith like gold. She wasn't so much worried about whether he would grant their requests either, because she knew the Mayor would have given her anything. The old, human Mayor would have, anyway. "You're scared." Nancy's reflection stared back at her, hands folded like a little monk, knelt before the mirror. Her scarred face was placid, looking almost sorrowful. "You think he won't do it?" her black lips asked. Faced with the question she'd just asked herself, Faith could more or less answer no. _The man gave me an apartment once. He'd have gotten me my own F-14 if I'd asked him. You're my girl, he'll hook you up too. Don't stress over that._ "Then what's wrong?" Nancy insisted. She looked like a pouty little clown, would have been kind of cute if not for the low, dangerous tremor always in her voice. Faith didn't answer. She remained very still inside Nancy's shell, not responding. The fire jumped wildly in its trashcan, and the mirror shard was bent slightly, giving Nancy's dark image a warped, funhouse appearance. Her small chest rose and dropped in a wearied sigh. "Whatever," she muttered. "Listen... you mind if I grab some sleep before we do this? The moon needs to be up anyway." _What if there's no moon tonight?_ But Nancy was already tipping over, tucking her black arm under her fritzed hair. Faith realized the girl was almost wiped out from the escape and the running and the stress over her broken hand. A witch had to be somewhat rested up in order to perform her magic right, that's what Willow used to say anyway. Faith let the crazy girl's head rest, let her tiny body slump in a fetal position beside the pentagram they'd created. "Just a few hours," Nancy's voice muttered, already drifting off. Like they needed to waste any more time. But Faith lay down, inside her strange new companion. She would be safe here. If any trouble came by, Faith would just slip out and flambe it to death. Wondering where the little witch got off knowing that Faith would protect her, the dark Slayer slept, a real physical sleep, for the first time in weeks. 

*****************

_ The black men weaved in and out of the trees, in and out, in and out. Their white faces shrieked in the darkness, ghostly scream masks. Blood poured out of their sightless eyes, streaking down their faces. In a cold, dank shower stall the floor was slicked with water. The flourescent lights overhead were out. Buffy sat naked on the icy wet tile, knelt weeping over her broken angel -- a clay figure lying in clumpy pieces before her. The clay had turned to mud and ran in ruddy streams down the drain in the center of the floor. The Scully Witch stood over Faith with a large, jeweled, sword-like knife. In the most sisterly way she reached out and took up Faith's white skinny hands, and very slowly, almost clinically, sliced her wrists open. "You had it coming," she reprimanded dully, her voice a drugged-out monotone as Faith's lifeblood flowed in warm, soothing rivulets down into her palm. Her mother's face flashed, teeth leering in a face splashed with vodka, lit up by the cold neon light outside the window, as she towered over her cringing on the apartment floor. Her daughter lay in a puddle of vodka and her own urine, scared out of her by mom waving that knife around. "You lazy rugrat!! You want a pair of sneakers, get on your goddamn back and work for 'em!" She was screwing; hot, heavy humping in the back of a car, at the varsity football game, the stud she was banging laughing at her with every thrust. Nothing she did was good enough. "You're the lousiest lay I've ever had," Angel's lips taunted at her as she bit them hard enough to feel cold, dead blood spurt into her mouth. Someone was screwing her as she drove the blazing convertible down the dark highway, the signs clearly pointing the way as she blindly sped past them, fiery reds and yellows in the black. It was hard to steer, hard to see the road over the shoulder of whoever was writhing on top of her, grinding her into the springs of her burning seat. The inferno in the backseat lit everything clearly as Buffy raised her blonde, tussled head. "Some friend you are, F," she breathed. Her eyes glistened as they ran down her face in white-hot streams. Faith cringed as the car bounced angrily over potholes, filled with the ashes of everyone she'd ever loved and failed to protect. The hood was on fire. The Devil sat in the passenger seat beside her, dressed in a natty red suit to match his hair, giggling at the way his long graceful fingers were turning to snakes, conducting the hell's bells blasting over the radio. "Oh, now that's just silly," he muttered, showing them off to her._ With a jolting kick of their leg, Faith sat up in disgust and rolled out of Nancy's body, leaving the witch to sleep. 

**************

Five A.M. There was a factory whistle somewhere, a mile or so away, blaring out the hours. Faith looked over at the sleeping body she'd been occupying for most of yesterday, Nancy's tiny form draped in the black trenchcoat on the ground. The fire flickered orangely on her calm, chalky face. Faith turned her vision over the junkyard scanning for any possible ghost-ninjas from hell. Those guys seemed to be staying away tonight. Maybe they knew what was going to happen. Maybe they figured they didn't need to drag her into Hell, because pretty soon she was going to open the door there herself. Faith's nothing-eyes rested on the makeshift summoning area Nancy had set up. At least out here she could think and not worry about the kid hearing, anyway. Faith did, in fact, have a few ideas as to why they shouldn't be doing what they were about to do. She remembered Giles, and Liz, and even the Mayor for that matter, giving a few good reasons as to exactly why raising a dead demon was probably not a great idea. _"Why didn't you ever raise her?" Elizabeth Fahey French poured another finger of liquor into Faith's shot glass, refilling her own generously at the same time. Her apartment was typical Council deluxe -- which meant the cheapest sleazeball rent that could be found in Boston -- but even with its broken windows, tattered curtains, and shoddy furnishings, it was still a vast improvement over Faith's present home -- her mother's boyfriend's back shed of a place. They'd been kicked out of their own apartment the month before, a situation her mother had solved by shacking up with any bum that would have her, dragging Faith along for the ride. At sixteen, Faith was no longer a baby and had run away twice, but the state had always sent cop cars out after her. She had a feeling, though, that the next time she ran.... Hell, next time she ran, not even a car would be able to stop her. Lizzie drank, as did Ma, but she too was infinitely preferable over Faith's violent, spasmodic mother. At least when Liz got drunk, she just passed out. She didn't work herself into a rage. She got depressed to the point of suicidal, or cheery to the point of being annoying, but she never, ever got angry. She was jabbering even now, talking about how her sister had been killed by a vampire while visiting Ireland. Lizzie had been miles away when it happened, unable to save her or even come to the funeral. The Council pretty much held Watchers hostage when they trained them. While Liz's sis had been getting her throat cut, Liz had been stuck in Britain studying the Necromonicon, the Book of the Dead. She had learned some handy tricks, too. Like raising dead people, for one. Which begged Faith's question. Lizzie had laughed bitterly. "Duck, the Council don't just lend their books out like the bloody public library," she had muttered, taking another swig. Faith held her glass, swirling the makeshift gin and tonic. Liz was so cool. She let Faith drink whenever she wanted. "C'mon, you never even thought about it?" she teased, although it wasn't really a laughing matter. Liz's narrow eyes had just given her that look. She sneered, looking drunkenly around. "Lemme see that," she said, pointing waveringly. "That" was some of the junk this apartment had come complete with -- old clothes, garbage, and a few leftover kids toys. What was left of a battalion of green army men stood in arched, fighting positions on the grimy kitchen countertop. Faith snatched up one, a green little grenadier with his arm frozen above his head, ready to throw. Liz opened up the apartment's cruddy microwave and stood the little man on the little plate inside, shutting the door. With a few beeps she turned it on and let it run for about a minute. Faith had laughed at the prospect of frying army men in the microwave, wondering what else they could amuse themselves with. She'd heard potatoes blew up when you didn't poke holes in them....and forks, hell.... Beep. Soup's done. Liz popped open the door to reveal the melty, sticky remains of Army Man, not entirely puddled but melted into a malleable, squishy ball of putty. Liz rolled the hot plastic between her long bony fingers, holding it up to Faith in the dim apartment. "What is it?" she asked. Faith gave her a look. "It was an army guy before you nuked him. Now it's just plastic." "Right!" Liz sat back with a triumphant smirk like that explained everything. "It was a plastic soldier. Now it's still plastic, but you can't call it a soldier or even a man, can you?" She held up the cooling lump of green. "That... is what death does, duck. You die, you go through all manner of changes. If you brought back someone who'd been dead say a year -- well she'd be a soul, but that'd be about it. She'd be nothing like the person you knew, so changed would she be. Death twists." Faith had regarded the twisted lump of plastic that had once been a toy man. It was impossible to even see any of its factory-molded features. It might as well never have been a soldier at all. _ In the junkyard, in the flickery fire, Faith gazed down now at the makeshift, shivery pentagram Nancy had drawn. Supposing it worked, and they did somehow conjure up the Mayor's spirit before them -- what would he be like? Himself? Olvikhan? Or something else? Something maybe like that frightening nothing-void she'd glimpsed, during those few seconds Mikado Man had had her face in his hood? Something that wouldn't recognize her... that might kill her without a second glance? Nancy was moving. Her scowling brows were clenching even further, as if whatever freaky demons in there were beating the crap out of her. "No...nn-no!!" she wailed drunkenly. Thinking fast, Faith dived inside the girl's shell, before Nance could wake up enough to realize she was gone. In the confusion of waking, figuring out where she was, what had happened, the witch didn't even notice the floods of light, the flashes. Faith assumed an annoyed, just-woke-up 'tude. _What is it? What's up, N?_ Her head turned frantically, looking around the junkyard -- but no one was there. Faith got the residue sense of big...monster ducks, with claws on the ends of their webbed toes, walking around.... _man. Are you rested up enough now, or do we have to get a room?_ "N-no," Nancy scrambled, gathering her wits, rocking herself into a sitting position. "No....I can do it now," she muttered. _Good, cause I'm gettin' cramped in here._ Faith winced as Nancy's stomach wheeled, and she almost hurled again, as she bent over to pick up the magic book she'd stolen from the shop. Thankfully, this time she kept her innards down. The damage on Nancy's system -- it was starting to show, already, wearing on her body like stripping an engine. Faith couldn't seem to stay off the car references.... But that's all Nancy was, wasn't she? Just a vehicle. A shell for Faith to get around in. Who cared what happened to the little freakshow witch afterward? She opened the book, and Faith found herself scanning over badly-scribbled drawings and ancient text and runes. She read along with Nancy, as the witch skimmed the spells, coming to rest at one -- the summoning of demons. Daemons, the book spelled it. Very dangerous, not to be tried by a novice witch. Should the daemon escape the circle, it would likely kill the witch and then go on to rampage the earth. "Well, enough of that crap," grumbled Nancy, throwing the book aside unceremoniously. "God, you think McDonald's is open yet? I'm starving." Faith's former confidence in Nancy's witch rep was rapidly crumbling. _Uh...yeah... you just wanna focus on the spell, there? Not real eager to come face to face with a rampaging daemon, at least not in this bod._ Nancy coughed once in reply as she balanced herself on her knees, stretched her aching body out. The dark air seemed to have gotten warmer, a thick, suffocating haziness. All outside noise seemed to have stopped, too; it was deadly waiting silent as as the witch raised the clunky hunting knife to the dark sky. "Hail, dark ones!" she hollered, her scratchy voice raking her throat. "I, Nancy, daughter of the goddess, hail thee! Grant me a council with your unholy minion Olvikhan!" She had done this before, she was in her element now. Memories floated though Faith's consciousness like leaves on a river: rituals performed at late-night slumber parties, dark secrets shared between sisters, pages and pages of arcane knowledge being traded. Witches joining in secret meetings, summoning unheard- of powers... although summoning a demon (daemon) was not to be attempted, not by legitimate witches in normal circumstances. This was wrong, what they were attempting was wrong, against every fundamental rule of a practicing witch... Nancy, however, was beyond caring about legitimacy, beyond caring about right or wrong. "The power of the circle enfolds thee!" she cried, her voice breaking childishly. "The icons of earth, blood, and spirit bind thee! I summon thee Olvikhan, to serve my bidding!" Nothing happened, but then Faith wasn't expecting much. The waveriness of whatever spell Nancy was weaving seemed to be having an effect on her, though... she could feel that tied-up, smashed part of them aching, like an amputated stump, a bruise tingling as the witch struggled to use it. "Come to us, Olvikhan! Show thyself to thy daughters! Appear before us now!!" _I'm not a witch, N,_ Faith reminded her apprehensively. The fire in the trash barrel was jumping in a very weird way. _Y'know, maybe I oughta step outside while you do this, I mean maybe I'm throwin' you off by being in here--_ The fire barrel exploded. Razor sharp bits of hot rusty metal flew over the circle, slashing toward them in fiery, sparky trails. A block of burning something hit Nancy in the arm, bouncing off. A few sparky bits of trash bounced over the edge of the circle. The blaze that exploded to life in the center of the circle completely obliterated the star, and the words around the edges. Nancy was so startled she flopped back hard on the ground. Faith held her non-breath as the raging fire stayed inside -- just barely -- of the messily drawn dirt circle. The fire began whipping higher, higher; twisting as it rose toward the black sky. It folded itself into a tornado, a towering vortex of bright hot flame, stretching up twenty, fifty, a hundred feet. The entire junkyard was lit up, clear as day. Nancy's sleeve burst into spontaneous flames. She screamed, whapping furiously at it -- with her broken hand. Warning alarms of pain shot up her arm. Bits of burning fabric came off, flying away. Her heels kicked, digging into the ground spastically, kicking up dirt. Faith panicked. _Nancy, knock it off!! You're wiping out the cir--_ The tornado exploded. An invisible shockwave knocked over everything within a fifty foot radius. Car parts and tires smashed against the wooden fence at the other end of the yard, shooting holes through it. Nancy went flying, slamming hard into a slab of torn up concrete. Faith was blown right out of Nancy's body. If possessing a human was a nauseating, unbalanced experience, being shoved out of one was even more so. And the strange part was, it wasn't unfamiliar. Being torn right out of skin and bone, like pulling off a particularly large scab, was something Faith knew from before... not too long ago, either..... She looked up from where she'd landed -- rolled some feet away, a ghostly tumbleweed. She looked up at Nancy, cringing on her back, staring up at the... thing... towering over her. The vortex of flame was gone, it had coagulated into slimy, scaly black form, undulating a hundred feet over the junkyard. Nancy's bad hand flailed in panic over her, in a feeble attempt to ward the thing off, and she was screaming, totally freaked. _Olvikhan. Holy shit._

******************

No wonder the boss had wanted to be it. The demon was worse than a Godzilla-sized snake; from the way fear and darkness radiated off its scales, poisoning everything in the junkyard, Faith could tell there was serious, deep dark power locked up in that beast. It startled her, made her suddenly aware of how very small and stupid she was, in comparison with the great abyss of evil, of dark knowledge, of eons of blackness that had come before her. If there were things like this out there -- so much of it, so very much, more than any Slayer could ever hope to win against-- An abyss. A fiery black hole, into which countless souls had fallen, countless moths drawn to the flame and incinerated alive. The Mayor, burning in a fertilizer bomb...his dead wife, melting like a wax Barbie doll in the flames... Faith's mom, drowning on booze and vomit filling her mouth... Nancy, going insane as the demons she worshipped ate her brain...and Faith. Drowned alive by her own desires, by oceans of blood. Even Buffy would be no match. The darkness stalking her every night in the graveyard would have her, someday; it would take time but she was already halfway there, slipping further and further down the abyss she had opened when she'd cut open Faith's stomach. Willow, Giles, the others would all follow, all heroes would fall in the face of-- _No,_ Faith thought, railing against the fear even as it drowned her. _No.... no, don't do it, boss, please don't--_ The towering black vortex of anti-light shot its solidified head down at Nancy. The screaming witch cringed there, a mouse awaiting her doom. Faith ran. Or floated, whichever better described it. She got herself away from there by sheer force of will, exploded out of the junkyard, shot across the city streets. She left town, hurtling across fields and rivers. She chanced a look back, and saw the roiling black form shimmering darkly as it came after her, barreling over the earth, ripping tunnels through forests that had stood hundreds of years. Faith looked up into the grey sky, wondering if she shot up into the stratosphere, whether the demon could follow. Probably could. As much power as that thing had... she fought that thought down and kept flying, harder, faster, as fast as she could go. The trees melted away, the grasslands vanished. The red desert stretched flat before her, glowing bright red in the light of the rising sun, jagged buttes rising on either side. Faith bounced off rock faces, sending bits of red clay crumbling as she somersaulted wildly through canyons. She could actually hear rock smashing behind her, ages-old formations crumbling like skyscrapers as the demon crashed through them. She could hear it breathing now -- hadn't been able to before. It was gaining on her. It was no use. Faith was flying as hard as she could, but she was losing speed. Her back felt uncomfortably vulnerable as she gunned her failing, sputtering form along, like a car running out of gas. _C'mon...come on!!_ She tugged herself, feet bogging down in a tar swamp, dragging herself onward, onward... her strength couldn't last forever. Not even as a ghost. It wasn't fair... The sun ripped out of the red clouds, lighting up the desert sand as Faith hit a canyon wall -- and stopped. The ringing in her head was almost physical, she felt as though she'd been thrown into a steel barrier. Everything was neon red, cavernous rocks towering above her, dusty flat sand surrounding her. Even the sky was red, tinted by the fire-colored sunrise. She must have flown through a whole damn time zone! Faith cringed into the rock as the slithering snake demon rolled toward her from the horizon, like a thunderhead, growling absmally. The red miasma of death coming off it clogged her, vasoline in her eyes. The jagged mouth opened. A long, lolling black tongue almost as thick as it was snapped toward her. A frog eating a fly. The forks burned like fire as they carressed her ghost form, solid only to other ghosts, painfully real and corporeal to the demon. Faith let out a shattering groan of disgust and rage, feeling the burning slime course over what used to be her legs. _Thanks be to you, Slayer. Your reward awaits._ The formless demon raised its black head, oily clouds surrounding it like dragon smoke. Its teeth fixed in an ugly, taunting leer, it jerked away, slithering over the desert sand, toward the flat horizon, out of sight with a noise like crickets, leaving her. Because after all, she was only a ghost. A Dead Slayer. Not even worth the bother. Faith lay there, not touching the dirt ground she had come to rest on, her entire soul shaking. 

***************

A thousand miles away over the earth, in the darkened back room of a cluttered magic shop, the Englishman sitting slumped over a table strewn with scrolls and books suddenly jerked, as if out of a nightmare. He lost his balance and toppled out of his chair, onto the floor. Scrolls and papers spilled everywhere. The yellow light wobbled as the lamp was hit. Rupert Giles sat up wearily, hand rubbing the back of his crooked neck. His glasses hung off his ears, and he looked up at the table where he'd fallen asleep over his research. The bottle of Irish whiskey sat empty up there, acting as paperweight to the few papers that hadn't fallen. The room was dark, understandable since the lampshade had tilted when he fell, but that wasn't it. Something had shocked him out of sleep. He hadn't been dreaming... but he could still feel the remnants of the jolt his system had taken, like recovering from one of those blasted falling dreams. His whole body resonated with anticipation...with dread. He looked down at the floor, where the obituary announcing the death of Joyce Summers lay underneath him, a sticky circle in the shape of his liquor glass staining it. "Something has happened," he muttered to the yellowing, grainy photo. Giles looked up at the dim shapes the lamplight made on the wall. Dimmer, seemingly, than before he'd fallen asleep. "Something terrible has happened," he repeated pensively. And he had the dread feeling it was something they were already too late to prevent. 

******************

It was a while before she found her way back. The demon had chased Faith a long way. When she finally did find the city, the junkyard, and the clearing, it felt as though days had passed. But whether it was days or minutes, she had no way to tell, and from what she found, it didn't really matter. Nancy's black body lay on the dirty wet ground, her clothes flattened by a recent rain. Her eyes were nothing but whites, rolled permanently back in her head, the same color as her waxen face. The hunting knife was still clutched in a death grip in her white left hand. Cautiously, Faith drifted over the ground, looming over the witch's lifeless body. She cast a look to the shattered trash barrel, which had long since burned out. The circle Nance had drawn was all but obliterated from the rain and from a large black scorch mark, shooting out in rays from where the dirt circle had been broken. The junk surrounding the summoning place was all charred, tires still steaming. The witch wasn't dead. As Faith moved closer, she picked up a miniscule, shallow movement in the girl's tiny chest. "Nance?" she spoke, her watery voice rippling. No answer. No movement in the eyes. Faith steeled herself, knowing there was only one way to be sure. She leaned over, pouring herself inside. The girl laying on the ground suddenly coughed, choking on the water and caught air in her mouth. Her eyes rolled, she tried to sit up, her every muscle screaming, as a wracking cough bent her over. Rolling over painfully, she forgot about her broken hand for the moment and accidentally leaned on it. "Ah--" she hissed, sucking in her breath as fiery acid pain exploded over her arm. Wouldn't try that again. "Nance?" she spoke raspily. Inside her, there was no answer. Faith could not feel any presence inside this mind beyond her own. "Nancy, you in here?" she spoke again, not too encouraged by the fact that she seemed to be in total control of the witch's voice. It bounced off the junk in the yard audibly. There was nothing. She was so cold. Her lower lip shuddered as she acknowledged how very wet and cold and ill-dressed she was. Faith looked up at the sky. The sun was visible only as a gauzy yellow ball behind the curtains of grey clouds. She was alone in this body. Nancy, to all appearances, was dead. _Well, we got what we asked for. She got a higher state of consciousness, and I got a body._ The wet, shivering, filthy girl in the mud heaved a gravelly sigh. "Wasn't exactly what I was hopin' for, boss," she grumbled.   


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Watch this space for Chapter Four: Going Back To Cali. Want it *now?* Gimme feedback. Visit my site: Sunnydale City Hall **


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